Lili Hits Bahamas, Inflicts Scattered Damage; Cuban Crops Hammered

Hurricane Lili tore off roofs, swamped banana farms and disrupted communication across the Bahamas on Saturday, a day after battering Cuba’s crucial sugar and coffee crops.

But the damage was scattered and no serious injuries were reported.

“We were lucky,” said acting Police Commissioner Erold Farquahar.

Lili headed east into the Atlantic on Saturday after bashing the islands of the Bahamas overnight with sustained winds of 95 mph and wind gusts of more than 100 mph.

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The only injury reported was to a fisherman on Andros Island who was cut by a propeller when his boat flipped over in high seas. He was treated at a community clinic and released.

In Cuba, there also was only one injury reported: A man was hit by a falling tree. But the storm’s high winds and 12 inches of rain inflicted severe damage on sugar plantations, mills and coffee crops in the central section of the island nation.

“It has been a real disaster,” said Miguel Diaz Canel, a Communist Party official in Villa Clara province, a largely agricultural area on the north-central side of the island.

Diaz said the wind flattened most of the sugar fields and ripped corrugated metal roofing from the province’s 28 sugar mills.

He estimated that 90% of the province’s plantain crop was severely damaged as well as tobacco seedlings--more bad news for the island’s agriculture industry, which suffered heavy losses during a 1993 storm.

The storm also knocked down more than 67 utility poles in Villa Clara province, cutting telephone communication and electricity.

More than 3,000 homes were destroyed and 26,000 partly damaged by Hurricane Lili in its rampage through Cuba, national civil defense officials reported Saturday, according to the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina. In Havana, nearly 4,000 homes were damaged.

The storm also damaged a major power station in Cienfuegos, a province in central-southern Cuba. President Fidel Castro met with civil defense leaders in the province and credited their preparation efforts with saving lives, Prensa Latina reported.

None of Cuba’s tourist spots was damaged, Vice Minister of Tourism Miguel Brugeras was quoted by the news agency as saying.

The Bahamas fared much better. Bahamian Cabinet ministers met Saturday to assess damage and concluded that the island chain, which has dodged many major hurricanes over the years, got another break.

“We have been spared again,” said Basil O’Brien, secretary to the Cabinet. “There is no damage to any of the tourism facilities.”

The airport in Nassau was reopened Saturday morning, although most air travel to the central and south islands was cut off until today.

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The hurricane inflicted scattered damage on several islands and the central Bahamas, including south Andros, Exuma, Long Island, and San Salvador.

San Salvador, the island where Christopher Columbus was said to have made his first landfall in the Americas, experienced flooding, extensive damage to homes and damage to one of its two hotels.

The tiny village of Georgetown, on the island of Exuma, took a direct hit, forcing 40 of its 800 residents to evacuate.

Saturday afternoon, Lili was centered about 550 miles southwest of Bermuda and was moving east-northeast at 25 mph. The hurricane had sustained winds of near 115 mph.