Cubans check hurricane destruction

HAVANA -- Cuban officials who traveled to regions hit hard by Hurricane Michelle have found vast destruction: sugar mills wrecked, crops ruined, hundreds of homes destroyed.

But with whole communities unreachable by car or telephone, Cuba's communist leaders said they had no clear picture of the overall damage wrought when the storm's 135 mph winds whipped across the island Sunday.

"A total estimate of losses will be delayed several more days more because of the lack of communication," the Communist Party daily Granma reported Wednesday.

Flying over central Cuba on Tuesday afternoon, authorities saw cane fields flattened by wind and piles of wood and straw that were once thatched roof homes.

Among the sugar mills that were devastated was the historic Australia Central, the place from which Fidel Castro directed government forces which repelled a CIA-organized invasion army at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.