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Cuba's longtime leader Fidel Castro said Hurricane Gustav hit his country like a nuclear blast, and estimated it would take three to four billion dollars to cope with the emergency.In one of his frequent columns in state media, the man who was Cuba's president for almost five decades said television images of the destruction wrought by Gustav on Cuba's Isle of Youth reminded him of a"nuclear blast"hit an"the devastation" he saw when he visited Hiroshima in August 1945."Now the battle is to feed the victims of the hurricane," Castro said estimating Cuba needs three to four billion dollars "just to handle our most basic needs."But "such an effort must come from the work of the people.No one can do it for us," Castro, 82, stressed. Cubans earn under 20 dollars a month on average.Gustav crashed across the Isle of Youth and then the western Cuban mainland Saturday with blasts of wind up to 340 kilometers (211 miles) per hour, leaving widespread destruction and injuries but no reported deaths.Early estimates are that some 130,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. Crops were wiped out, schools and workshops were damaged and power lines knocked down.Castro quoted a letter sent him by prominent painter Alexis Leyva, known as Kcho, who is a native of the Isle of Youth and visited after the storm."There are problems getting food...the island is like a prison now.Money has no value; there is nothing to buy or anywhere to buy anything," Castro quoted him as saying.http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080903163000.hwoikn1h&show_article=1&catnum=0
As in the days of Noah...
