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‘Total despair’: Cubans face devastation in Pinar del Rio after Hurricane Ian

MIAMI – Hurricane Ian made landfall in southwestern Florida’s Cayo Costa as a Category 4 storm on Wednesday — while Cubans were still assessing the damage it caused on Tuesday.

Carmen Pino who lives north of Cayo Costa said she was more worried about her family in Cuba than about her neighbors after Ian made landfall on Tuesday as a Category 3 storm in La Coloma.

Ian’s storm surge destroyed homes and farms in the coastal town, where Pino was born, on the southwestern shore of Cuba. It flooded the home where her 99-year-old father, Jesus Pino, still lives.

“The only thing I know so far is that he’s alive,” Carmen Pino said in Spanish on Wednesday describing the situation in the town as “total chaos.”

Pino said her family and neighbors need help.

“It is a town that is without drinking water. It is a town that is without food. It is a town that is in total despair,” Pino said.

Ian destroyed Yusimi Palacios’s home after her roof caved in the Cuban province of Pinar del Rio’s town of Puerta del Golpe. Palacio said her children hid under the bed.

“They don’t even have dry clothes to wear,” Palacios said in Spanish adding that she is glad they survived.

Palacios said she is hopeful government officials will help her to repair her home and provide them with at least a mattress to sleep in. Government officials promised to restore power after outages on the entire island on Tuesday.

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