By the BBC's Daniel Schweimler in Havana.
BBC News Online. Monday, 5 November, 2001,
19:12 GMT.
Cubans are emerging from their homes to assess the damage caused to the
island by Hurricane Michelle.
The hurricane, now reduced from a Category 4 to a Category 3 storm, is
heading towards the Bahamas.
It hit the southern coast of Cuba on Sunday night, taking several hours to
cross the island. It brought with it winds of over 200km an hour and heavy rain,
and left five dead, according to civil defence officials.
Huge waves continued to crash on the shore hours after the hurricane had
passed.
Early on Monday morning the Cuban authorities said the state of alert
declared throughout much of the island was now over and the recovery phase had
begun.
Fallen trees and tree branches were being cleared from roads and electricity
and gas supplies slowly restored.
Many areas, including the capital, Havana, spent the storm and several hours
afterwards without gas, electricity and telephone lines.
International and national flights as well as public transport across the
island were suspended.
Damage assessment
Huge areas of agricultural land, mostly across the centre of the island,
were devastated and the task of assessing the damage to buildings is only now
beginning.
Casualties appear to have been kept to a minimum, largely thanks to the
enormous government civil defence operation which was started several days
before the hurricane hit and is likely to continue for several more days.
More than 600,000 people were moved from vulnerable regions, mainly along
the coast or low-lying isolated rural areas.
The whole 5,500 population of the southern fishing town of Surgidero de
Batabano was evacuated. Hurricane Lili completely flooded the town five years
ago, destroying hundreds of homes.
"I really don't want the hurricane to come through again," said
one resident, Jose Luis Olivera, 37, who lives there with his pregnant wife and
daughter.
People living in fragile housing in Havana, many of them in the colonial
centre of the city, were also taken to safe shelters.
Hundreds of thousands of animals were moved because Cuba, with its fragile
economy, can ill afford to lose them.
Government action
Cubans were urged to stay in their homes during the storm where they watched
constant television coverage of the approach of Hurricane Michelle. When the
power went, they switched to transistor radios.
The authorities gave out constant advice on storing food and boiling water,
on how to protect houses and other security measures. Their aim was also to
reassure as well as to protect the population.
President Fidel Castro oversaw some of the operation. He praised the Cuban
people for what he called their organisation and unity.
The economic cost of Hurricane Michelle to the Cuban economy will be huge.
The timing could not have been worse as the country is struggling to cope with a
huge drop in tourism, its main foreign currency earner, following the 11
September attacks on the United States.
But the communist government in Cuba has always placed the emphasis on
people rather than profit and its operation, in those terms, to limit the damage
caused by Hurricane Michelle appears at this stage to have been a considerable
success. | 
