Cubaverdad

U.S. and Cuba Work Together on Storms
By MARC LACEY
Published: August 20, 2009

MEXICO CITY — The first tropical storms of the season have begun raging
across the Atlantic, bringing with them all manner of panic and
potential destruction — and, behind the scenes, a little boost in United
States-Cuba relations.

A satellite image of Hurricane Bill's position on Thursday. "Any storm
that goes toward Florida goes over Cuba, so we need their observations,"
said Max Mayfield, a hurricane specialist. "And they need our data from
the aircraft."

The gusty winds, heavy rains and ocean swells that hurricanes produce do
not know the difference between Guantánamo and Galveston, which has made
the weather one of the few topics on which the United States and Cuban
governments regularly engage.

"We've had a close working relationship in regard to tropical cyclones
that goes back to the '70s and '80s," said Max Mayfield, who retired in
2007 after seven years as director of the National Hurricane Center in
Miami. "Any storm that goes toward Florida goes over Cuba, so we need
their observations. And they need our data from the aircraft."

With coastal communities in both countries vulnerable, meteorology could
bring the longtime adversaries closer together, especially with the
policy of increased engagement pushed by President Obama, experts argue.
Wayne Smith, a former American diplomat in Havana who is now a fellow at
the Washington-based Center for International Policy, has brought an
array of American officials to Cuba in recent years to look at how Cuban
disaster preparedness programs manage to keep the number of hurricane
deaths on the island so low.

Among those who made the trip last month were Russel Honoré, a retired
lieutenant general who was the commander of the military's Hurricane
Katrina task force; Robert Turner, regional director of the Southeast
Louisiana Flood Protection Authority East; and Stewart Simonson,
assistant secretary for emergency preparedness in the Department of
Health and Human Services during the George W. Bush administration.

Ivor van Heerden, a hurricane expert at Louisiana State University who
visited Cuba last year, contends that American policies should be
loosened to allow a transfer of technology to Cuba to help bolster its
oceanographic and weather data collection. The United States could learn
from Cuba's evacuation plans, post-disaster medical support and citizen
disaster education programs, he said.

"No matter how much our government may decry the Cuban regime, it is a
fact that they are very successful in orchestrating evacuations and
meeting the public health and medical needs of their population during
disasters," Mr. van Heerden wrote in a paper several months ago for the
Center for Democracy in the Americas, a Washington-based group that
wants to normalize relations with Cuba.

Cubans are taught about hurricanes in elementary school, and every block
has a captain whose job it is to help evacuate people and relocate their
possessions to safe locations. Evacuations are compulsory in Cuba, which
keeps casualties low but also highlights the government's control over
most aspects of people's lives. Those same captains also keep tabs on
neighbors' loyalty to the government.

"We have a different form of government in the United States," Lyda Ann
Thomas, the mayor of Galveston, Tex., told reporters during a visit to
Cuba in April to examine Cuba's preparedness plans. "When we call for a
mandatory evacuation and citizens are warned they may be left without
water and resources, they still have the right to tell their government
they do not wish to leave their homes."

For years, the Cubans have allowed American government "hurricane
hunter" planes to enter their airspace to measure storms from the air.
Even during Mr. Bush's presidency, when the trade embargo between the
countries was tightened, American and Cuban government meteorologists
were cooperating when it came to storms.

While one part of the United States Commerce Department was in charge of
enforcing the embargo — fining those who visited Cuba illegally or
purchased outlawed Cuban cigars — another part of it was trading
information and engaging in training exercises with the Cubans on storms.

Tensions do still arise. The two governments have turned down hurricane
aid from each other, and when advocacy groups held a United States-Cuba
hurricane summit meeting in Mexico in 2007, an American government
meteorologist said he received a call from the State Department as he
was heading there ordering him not to attend.

"The State Department called me at the airport and said, 'You're not
allowed to go to the meeting,' " said Lixion Avila, a Cuban-born
hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center. "I told them that
we meet Cuban meteorologists regularly."

Still, Cuban hurricane experts participate in the annual training
exercises at the hurricane center in Miami. "It's not as simple as with
Jamaica when it comes to visas, but we work together," Mr. Avila said.

Mr. Mayfield, who is now a hurricane specialist for a Miami television
station, said he understood those who were pushing for greater
engagement with Cuba and those who considered the government so
abhorrent that isolation was the only acceptable approach. "I have a lot
of Cuban friends whose parents were taken off to prison by the
military," he said. "I understand their views, but it seems there are
some areas where it makes sense to talk."

Mr. Mayfield said his counterpart at Cuba's Institute of Meteorology,
José Rubiera, had the advantage of having his own government television
station to reach the population in advance of approaching storms. "It's
easier if you have a government-run television station," Mr. Mayfield
said. "He could get the message out anytime he wanted to. There were
times I would have liked to have had that platform."

Mr. Avila, whose mother lives in Cuba, sees his work with Cuban
meteorologists as apolitical. "I'm trained to save lives and it doesn't
matter if they are Cuban, Chinese or American lives I'm saving by
forecasting storms," he said.

But he said the evacuation approach used in his birthplace would not
necessarily work for his adopted home.

"There, they put everyone in a truck and move them," Mr. Avila said.
"You can't do that in the U.S."

But some things are more transferable. Mr. Turner, the Louisiana flood
official who visited Cuba last month, said he was impressed with the
islandwide disaster drills and the regular inspections of homes to
determine their ability to withstand strong winds.

"There are probably lessons that can be learned on both sides," he said.

U.S. and Cuba Work Together on Storms – NYTimes.com (20 August 2009)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/americas/21storm.html?hp