The shipments are valued at three million dollars and are intended for 24,000 people in the provinces most affected by the cyclone: Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Granma, and Guantánamo.
14ymedio, Miami, 14 January 2025 — The aid the United States promised to send to Cuba for the victims of Hurricane Melissa is finally beginning to materialize, two and a half months after the cyclone struck the eastern part of the island. This Wednesday, the first flight departed from Miami bound for Holguín, carrying various essential supplies.
To provide details, Mike Hammer, head of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, held a press conference in the same hangar, while the State Department issued a statement. The statement announced two charter flights, one on Wednesday and another on Friday, bound for Santiago de Cuba, “each carrying 525 food packages, 650 hygiene kits, and water for 1,000 families.”
Furthermore, it was announced that a commercial ship will arrive in Santiago de Cuba “within the next few weeks with the rest of the assistance from Washington.” The total value of the aid is three million dollars, providing support for 6,000 families, or 24,000 people, in the provinces most affected by the cyclone: Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Granma, and Guantánamo.
The US government says the shipments are designed to “reach those most in need, evading regime interference, and ensuring transparency and accountability.”
The U.S. government asserts that the shipments are designed to “reach those most in need, evading regime interference, and ensuring transparency and accountability.” To this end, they are working in coordination with the Catholic Church organization Caritas. “We are working with the Catholic Church and our partners to ensure that aid goes directly to the Cuban people, not to the illegitimate regime. The Trump Administration stands with the Cuban people,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in a tweet on Wednesday.
The State Department statement lists the shipments as including rice, beans, oil, sugar, water purification tablets and storage containers, pots, cooking utensils, sheets, blankets, flashlights, and other essential items.
Since Hurricane Melissa’s passage, organizations including the Red Cross and countries including China, Venezuela, Spain, Colombia, South Korea, and Mexico have sent food and humanitarian aid to Cuba.
The hurricane caused extensive material damage—but no fatalities, according to the Cuban government—with winds of up to 200 kilometers per hour and rainfall reaching up to 400 millimeters (or liters per square meter) in some parts of the country. According to official figures, more than 90,000 homes were damaged, along with 600 state-run medical facilities, over 2,000 schools, approximately 100,000 hectares of crops, and infrastructure for transportation, telecommunications, electricity, and water supply.
The United Nations presented a $74.2 million (€64 million) action plan to assist a population of around one million people, slightly more than 10% of the country’s population. The US, for its part, pledged $37 million to the affected countries, but only $3 million, overseen by the Church, will go to the island.
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