Hurricane Lili Brings 90-mph Winds, Driving Rain to Cuba

HAVANA â€”  President Fidel Castro toured Cuba on Friday, vowing to win the “battle against natureâ€� after Hurricane Lili slashed the island with 90-mph winds and driving rains, collapsing buildings and forcing thousands of residents from their homes.

Castro, who had warned of possible “catastrophic� damage from the hurricane, welcomed 100 of the country’s 30,000 evacuees into the Revolution Palace, where his Cabinet meets.

“You have to feel as if at home here,� Castro said as they arrived Thursday night. “No storm will tear this down.�

State news media had no immediate reports of injuries, but Olivet Santana de la Pena, a civil defense worker in the northwestern coastal city of Matanzas, said a man was seriously hurt there when a tree fell on him.

By midday, with Lili’s center departed, residents of Matanzas, 90 miles south of Florida, were starting to sweep up streets. Children jumped up and down on a storm-downed palm tree branch, using it as a trampoline.

The storm killed eight people in Central America earlier this week. And heavy rains and flooding continued in Honduras on Friday, killing two American women working for the Peace Corps. The women were swept away by a raging river near Tegucigalpa, the U.S. Embassy said.

In Havana, electrical power, cut for most residents Thursday night as a precautionary measure, was being gradually restored Friday afternoon.

Castro told state radio that 16,500 tons of citrus, as well as plantain and ground root crops, had been damaged on the Isle of Youth, south of the mainland.

There was no official report of damage to Cuba’s crucial sugar crops. A 1993 storm caused heavy losses to the island’s agriculture.

The radio also reported 34 houses destroyed in the eastern province of Santiago. At least 10 buildings suffered partial collapses in Havana.