Muddy water and floating debris covered General Lee Street in the Diez de Octubre municipality of Havana this Saturday, following the heavy rains that struck the Cuban capital in the afternoon.
A video shared by the page Tiempo a su Favor on Facebook shows the road completely covered with brown and murky water, with trash and debris floating around.
The images reveal partially flooded commercial premises, while buildings with deteriorated facades and utility poles with exposed wires complete the view of an area affected by a lack of maintenance and the accumulation of waste.
Diez de Octubre is among the municipalities most affected by the rains that recently battered Havana, an event of larger scale that, according to data from the official site of the Presidency of Cuba, resulted in 26 completely collapsed homes and 122 with partial collapses in the capital.
The provincial secretary of the Party in Havana reported that in some areas more than 300 millimeters of rain fell in 24 hours. The electrical outages affected 78 circuits and left over 250,000 customers without service, with about 120,000 people still without electricity at the time of the official assessment. Additionally, 148 people were accommodated in state centers and 762 evacuated themselves to stay with family or friends.
The municipalities most affected by that incident were Boyeros, Diez de Octubre, Cotorro, San Miguel del Padrón, Arroyo Naranjo, La Lisa, and Cerro.
Behind every flood in Havana, there are two structural causes that the regime has not addressed for decades. The first is the century-old sewage system of the capital, built between 1908 and 1914 for a city of about 600,000 inhabitants, which today must serve nearly two million with a network of 1,755 kilometers of outdated pipes that are unable to drain heavy rainfall.
The second issue is the garbage collection crisis. In February of this year, only 44 out of 106 garbage trucks were operational in the capital due to a lack of diesel and mechanical deterioration, leaving a significant portion of the 24,000 to 30,000 cubic meters of solid waste generated by Havana each day uncollected. This accumulated garbage in streets and sidewalks obstructs drains and sewers, turning every rainstorm into a flood with floating debris, exactly as shown in the video of General Lee.
Heavy rains have caused similar scenes at various locations in the capital multiple times in recent years, and September, right at the peak of the hurricane season, is one of the rainiest months of the year in Cuba.
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