I received the following e-mail from a source known to me (ie. not likely fake or a fraud) yesterday. I don't know much about the group named in the first e-mail, though they and the author of the e-mail are listed on the Canadian Network for Cuba website when I Googled them:
-----Original Message-----
From: Randy Caravaggio - Victoria Goods for Cuba Sent: Sun 15-Aug-04 10:54 PM
Subject: Action on Hurricane Charley
Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 15:31:54 -0700
Hi Friends,
This is to inform you about the damages that Hurricane Charley left behind in Cuba Last Friday, Aug. 13 and to suggest an action plan for this situation.
The Victoria Goods for Cuba Committee has pledged to send $2,000 towards damages from Hurricane Charley. We have sent an appeal to all our members for donations and letters to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs demanding that funds and material aid be sent to our Cuban neighbours right away.
We would like to propose ....
1. that [we] collect funds.
2. money collected be presented to the Cuban Embassy's representatives ...
3. [we urge] the Canadian government for them to send funds and material aid to Cuba.
If for whatever reason they refuse, we must demand that they at least match our donations 10 to 1.
Randy Caravaggio
Victoria Goods for Cuba
----------------------------------------------
Recuperating from Hurricane Charley Fri, 13 Aug 2004
Susan Hurlich [Havana]
Hello all.
Hurricane Charley has been and gone, and as promised, here's a post-Charley report. Electricity, which returned briefly early yesterday afternoon (letting me send out my first Charley update), went out for the rest of the afternoon, only to return about 7:30pm for a couple of hours of news. Then it went out for good, until about 5:30 this afternoon.
Here's the latest news on Charley's passage. Sources are a preliminary report issued by national Civil Defense and the 8pm news which I've just heard now:
-four people died (one from a falling palm tree, two when their houses
-collapsed and one from drowning)
-and four others were injured, one quite seriously
>-in total, 215,532 people were evacuated. Don't know how many animals.
>-the areas which suffered the worst damage to housing are the
municipalities of San Cristobal, Candelaria and Bahia Honda in the province of Pinar del Rio, as well as the municipalities of Batabano, Guira de
Melena, San Antonio de los Banos and Bauta in the province of Havana. (I'm
giving you these details as I know some of you know these areas.) To give an example: in the two fishing communities of El Cajio and Guanimar, where Charley first touched Cuban soil on the southern coast of the province of Havana,
destruction has been total. In Cajio, only 12 houses of some 300 are still
standing. In Guanimar, no house survived Charley. Preliminary data for the province of Havana are that 989 houses are completely destroyed, 1,020 partially destroyed and some 9,000 have had their roofs damaged. For the city of Havana, some 140 houses are completely destroyed, 167 partially destroyed and 4,000 have had their roofs affected. In the three provinces of Pinar del Rio, Havana and the city of Havana, 502 schools have been damaged. There aren't yet preliminary statistics for Pinar del Rio. Probably tomorrow we'll have full details.
In agriculture: just to give an idea of the extent of damages, ALL banana
plantations in the province of Havana are completely destroyed. The aerial shots look like green toothpicks lying every which way on the ground. In the western part of the province of Havana, 90% of the shelters for large livestock were blown off and destroyed.
The electrical system has been greatly affected. The entire province of Pinar
del Rio is virtually without light, as the source of its energy is the large generating plant at Mariel on the northern coast (some 45 km west of Havana), which has been partially damaged. Lots of the 220 KW and 120 KW high power towers are on
the ground. As well, in the province of Havana, over 500 electric posts are on
the ground, which in the city of Havana, over 200 posts are down as well as some 50 transformers. The most affected municipalities in Havana are Playa and La Lisa. Already, linemen (and some linewomen, of which there are a few in Cuba)
are coming in from unaffected provinces like Villa Clara and Holguin, to
augment the contingent in the west.
When there's a hurricane in Cuba, the first during recuperation is repairing
any damage to potable water supplies and getting the electrical system up and running.
Hundreds of trees, many of them huge, have been knocked down by Charley's
winds, as well as electric and telephone posts, and many streets are blocked because of this. Just on our street, four huge trees are down and electric lines were on the ground until this afternoon when they were repaired. It's hard to find a
block in Havana without at least part of a tree down, and many blocks have
two or three huge trees lying on the ground, in yards, on top of houses or on sidewalks and roads, at various angles.
When Charley hit Cuba, it was a category 2 hurricane. When it hit the city of
Havana just after midnight, it had sustained winds of 180 km/hr and gusts over 200 km/hr. It entered the Cuban mainland at 2:15 this morning and left Cuba by 3am, at which time it began to move towards the Florida Peninsula. I just heard
on the news that it's now struck the US mainland as a category #3 hurricane,
but I don't have any more details than this.
Cuba is now in full Recuperative Phase -international flights were resumed this afternoon.
Cuba's hurricane season goes from June 1st to November 30th. According to
statistics from Cuba's national Meteorological Institute, in the last 200 years, Charley has been only the fourth hurricane to hit Cuba during the month of August.
And here, at Calle 27 #953, I was up until 4am listening to the news on my
little battery-operated Sony shortwave radio, as well as listening to the amazing wind concert outside. Little no-name kitty asked to spend the night inside the house and I couldn't refuse. For the rest of the night, he stuck close to my heels
like a shadow, and as I went from one room to the other, he followed me,
sticking closer than a sock in winter. This morning, the entire street was peopled with neighbours who were starting to clean up the debris in front of their own houses as well as helping each other. Our immediate neighbour almost lost his
adolescent avocado tree, which was leaning perilously close to the ground.
But since the roots hadn't yet pulled out, various neighbours helped pull it upright with a long, thick cord around its middle which is now looped around one of the columns of our neighbour's porch. Another neighbour across had the entire front
of his house covered by a huge tree which fell down, just up the street from us
there are three huge trees down, and a block north of us there are four huge trees down. Lots of electric wires on the ground and constant alerts on TV and the radio to NOT TOUCH THEM. I spent the morning and early afternoon cleaning up all the debris on the verandah and in the front yard, plus helping some of my immediate
neighbours with their clean-up. Then I went on a short bike ride to take a
look.
One lovely little detail: after people finish cleaning up their yards, the women tend to walk around with young children in hand, showing their the "sights", while the men set up tables on the sidewalks or even in the streets which are closed to
traffic due to trees lying across them, and play dominos! And you know the
Cuban style of playing dominos: lots of talk and laughter, and smashing those domino chips down on the table as loudly as possible.
Slowly - and in some areas more slowly than others - we begin to recuperate
from Charley's wicked embrace. And tomorrow begin the Olympics in Athens, and Cuba is very excited about the team they have there, and we'll be getting round-the-clock TV coverage. There's every reason to suspect that Cuba will take home lots of gold, as they usually do, although what with the US eliminated this year from baseball, the teams to watch in Athens are Cuba and Japan.
Susan
The new Reference Index has SO MUCH information, all neatly classified in alphabetical order! It took so many hours to put together, and it was organized in this fashion to make it easier and quicker to find information. The only way for anyone to copy it now would be to click on every topic and copy each post separately. It would be a HUGE job, so time consuming! 
we sent you an e-mail today.
that we will not be at the Canadian Cuban Frienship Day in Toronto on the 28th of August. It will be the first one we will miss in years.
and we look so forward to seeing the both of you again and any other happy faces 
I was shocked by this price comparison but I guess that's the way things have trended over the past few years. 
& DEIRDRE:
