HAVANA (AP) — A tornado and pounding rains smashed into the eastern part of Cuba's capital overnight, toppling trees, bending power poles and flinging shards of metal roofing through the air as the storm cut a path of destruction across eastern Havana.
Power was cut to many areas and President Miguel Diaz-Canel said Monday at least three people were killed and 172 injured.
Estamos recorriendo lugares afectados por fenómeno atmosférico de gran intensidad en Regla. Los daños son severos, hasta el momento lamentamos la pérdida de 3 vidas humanas y se atienden 172 heridos. Varias brigadas trabajando ya en el restablecimiento #SomosCuba pic.twitter.com/mPo9yAnaZy
— Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) January 28, 2019
Julio Menendez, a 33-year-old restaurant worker said Havana's 10 de Octubre borough "looks like a horror movie."
"From one moment to the next, we heard a noise like an airplane falling out of the sky. The first thing I did was go hug my daughters," who are 9 and 12, he told The Associated Press.
Driver Oster Rodriguez said that amid a fierce storm, what looked like a thick, swirling cloud touched down in the central plaza of the Reparto Modelo neighborhood "like a fireball." He saw a bus blown over, though he said the driver escaped unharmed.
The windows in the seven-story Daughters of Galicia Hospital had been sucked out of their frames by the wind, leaving curtains flapping in the breeze, and all the patients, new and expectant mothers, had to be evacuated. In the streets, a palm tree more than 30 feet (9 meters) tall had crushed a pre-revolutionary American car.
#TornadoEnLaHabana: Vecinos dan cuenta del sonido de las ambulancias. Cerro y Santo Suárez, Luyanó, Vía Blanca, Regla y Chibás entre los más afectados. pic.twitter.com/c1bsXL8srz
— Mario J. Pentón (@mariojose_cuba) January 28, 2019
