Guantánamo – After the intense rains caused by Hurricane Oscar, the Los Asientos reservoir in San Antonio del Sur overflowed its 17.5 million cubic meter reservoir and is discharging, said Leovis Herrera Vancol, principal specialist of the technical department of the Provincial Delegation of Hydraulic Resources.
The meteor, which fall landed as a category one hurricane on the Saffir Simpson scale and was later downgraded to a tropical storm, left in Guantánamo an accumulated 1,140 millimeters of precipitation, especially in San Antonio del Sur and Maisí, with 552 and 341 millimeters, respectively.
According to records, which do not yet include the values for Imías due to the lack of communication, all municipalities reported precipitation as the meteor passed, although in general the provincial accumulated amount represents only 51.4 percent of the historical averages for the month.
As for the rest of the reservoirs, also in San Antonio del Sur, the small Pozo Azul dam, which is in charge of supplying water to the agricultural areas of the Caujerí Valley and supplying the population, received almost 4 million cubic meters of water, and it is at 84 percent of its full capacity.
Meanwhile, the Comandante Faustino Pérez reservoir collected almost five million cubic meters and is currently at 94.8 percent of its capacity, which at this point in the year is an advantage, just weeks before the dry season begins in the country.
The Yaya and Jaibo, the largest reservoirs in the province and which combined could collect 280 million cubic meters, accumulated only a few hundred meters, which is not enough to recover their waters, especially in the case of the first one, which is only at 26 percent of its full capacity.
The most significant thing about Oscar’s passage was the intense rains in short periods of time, such as in San Antonio del Sur where more than 300 millimeters of rain fell in three hours according to provincial authorities, which caused severe flooding, loss of human life and material damage.
