Cuba is bracing for Hurricane Melissa as it heads towards Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest city, threatening catastrophic damage at a time the government is already failing to provide the most basic services and thousands are sick because of the rise of mosquito-transmitted diseases and other illnesses linked to poor sanitary conditions.

On Monday, Melissa grew from a Category 4 hurricane into a deadly Category 5 with sustained winds of 175 mph. Eastern Cuba is on Melissa’s direct path after it barrels over Jamaica, though the storm is expected to weaken slightly before making landfall on Cuba’s southeast coast some time on Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.

Heavy rains between Monday and Wednesday, 20 inches or more, are likely to cause “life-threatening and potentially catastrophic flash flooding with numerous landslides” in eastern Cuba, the National Hurricane Center said.

“There is a potential for significant storm surge along the southeast coast of Cuba late Tuesday or Wednesday,” the center said in its 5 p.m. advisory. “This storm surge will be accompanied by large and destructive waves.”

Cuba’s national civil defense agency extended the hurricane warnings Monday to cover all of eastern Cuba – the provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Granma, Guantánamo, Holguín and Las Tunas – as well as Camagüey, in the country’s central region. Other central provinces, including Ciego de Ávila and Sancti Spíritus are also on alert.

Authorities said they were preparing the mass evacuation of over 880,000 people: 110,000 people in Granma; 258,573 or 25% of Santiago de Cuba province’s population; 305,530 in Holguín; 140,000 in Guantánamo and 72,000 in Las Tunas.

Those numbers include the majority of Cubans who usually take shelter with relatives and neighbors.

Flights to airports in Santiago de Cuba and Holguín have been canceled for Tuesday and Wednesday, the Ministry of Transportation said. Train and bus service connecting eastern provinces with the rest of the island were also canceled.

Storm preparations

Cuba has been struck almost yearly by a major hurricane in recent years, sometimes twice, wrecking the country’s already decrepit infrastructure, damaging crops and destroying thousands of homes in precarious condition. Hurricanes Ian in 2022 and Rafael in 2024 both knocked out the country’s electrical grid.

As with everything else in the country, the civil defense system, which used to be efficient in preventing deaths, has struggled under the governments of Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel. There are at least 30 reported deaths linked to storms since 2017.

Last year, the civil defense, which is headed by 86-year-old Gen. Ramón Pardo Guerra, failed to evacuate residents in a mountainous area prone to flooding in the province of Guantánamo ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Oscar. As a result, six people died in a flash-flooding event, including a five-year old, her mother and a 92-year-old man.

This time, Cuba’s top leaders are sending the message that they have been planning ahead of the storm.

On Sunday, Díaz-Canel, along with the ministers of defense and interior, presided over a meeting of the National Defense Council with officials from around the country to discuss evacuations, efforts to secure crops and production facilities and plans for recovery.

“Given the priority of ensuring the protection of the population, the Cuban President directed the proper evacuation of people living in flood zones, downstream of dams and other at-risk areas, as well as making the most of their rest hours to protect themselves from the impact of this extreme weather event,” the presidential office said in a news release about the meeting.

“Everything must be done in a timely manner,” Díaz-Canel said according to the report. On Monday, he repeated a similar message in another National Defense Council meeting, highlighting “the humanistic vocation of the Revolution, which in the midst of a situation as difficult as the one we are experiencing, leaves no one behind and spares no resources to protect the lives of the population.”

On Monday, Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy captioned a photo showing a few utility vehicles with the text: “The linemen’s brigades that will take charge of the recovery after Hurricane Melissa are now ready.”

A health emergency

But despite government assurances, the hurricane will hit at a terrible time for the island’s population.

The electrical grid has collapsed several times in recent months and blackouts lasts several hours daily. That leaves many with limited access to information, even more so in already isolated rural areas in eastern Cuba that are in the path of the hurricane.

The energy ministry announced that the state electricity company would prioritize service in eastern Cuba on Monday, warning that the rest of the country would be more affected by electrical cuts. The state Electric Union announced it would be unable to meet as much as half the demand for electricity on Monday evening.

Eastern Cuba, a mountainous region and one of the country’s poorest, was already reeling from the lack of food and medicines before Melissa threatened more devastation. Shortages of gasoline and other fuels are particularly acute in those provinces, where public transportation is almost nonexistent and residents in rural areas use animals to get around or walk.

But a health emergency will complicate recovery efforts.

All over the country, trash collection has almost come to a halt, contributing to the propagation of mosquito-borne viruses like dengue, chikungunya and oropouche. The diseases they cause share similar symptoms — sudden fever, severe headache, joint and muscle pain, chills and rash — though dengue is considered the more severe of the three. Cases of diarrhea and hepatitis have also spiked.

Water supplies have also been severely affected by the lack of electricity and maintenance, making it difficult for Cubans to maintain hygiene and sanitation. The government has also scaled back on the intense fumigation campaigns that were a common sight in the past during summer, when the warm weather and high humidity create the best conditions for mosquitoes to reproduce.

Cuba routinely underreports cases of disease outbreaks because of the lack of testing supplies and secrecy practices that suppress information that might damage the country’s reputation and international tourism. Cuban official media have even spreading conspiracy theories accusing the United States of being behind the illness outbreaks.

But Cubans have been denouncing the worsening situation on social media and questioning the official figures and authorities’ denials of deaths amid the lack of medications and supplies in pharmacies, hospitals and local clinics.

On Friday, Vice Minister of Health Carilda Peña García said there has been a significant increase of illnesses causing fever, with 13,701 new cases last week, according to a report in the Communist Party newspaper Granmas.

She did not say which viruses were responsible for the illnesses but said there was confirmed active transmission of dengue fever in the provinces of Guantánamo, Ciego de Ávila, Matanzas, Cienfuegos, La Habana, Villa Clara, Sancti Spíritus and Camagüey, and chikungunya in more than 10 provinces, with the worst outbreaks happening in Havana and Matanzas. In the latter province, officials were planning to start fumigating this week, a delay criticized by Granma readers.

“The level of infections has reached a point where we are all waiting for one or more of the viruses to makes us sick,” one reader wrote in the comments section. “It seems that action should have been taken sooner. We know there is a lack of resources, but there is a lack of organization and timely monitoring.”

Another gave a more blunt assessment of the government’s efforts.

“They need to maintain better hygiene in the streets, where trash is collected every two months,” the reader wrote. “What health? There is no food. With what defenses are we going to overcome diseases? And in the hospitals there is no hygiene and no medicines.”

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