Large areas of Cuba were still without power today and millions were short of food two days after Hurricane Michelle slammed into the Caribbean island, destroying homes and crops, and killing five people.
"We survived!" an anxious but upbeat President Fidel Castro said as he criss-crossed the worst-affected central western provinces of Matanzas, Villa Clara and Cienfuegos to see the damage from Cuba's worst storm in half a century.
The disaster was a further blow to Cuba's fragile economy, whose recovery from a decade-long crisis after the Soviet collapse was already being undermined by this year's world economic downturn and the aftermath of the September 11th attacks on the United States.
Assessing immediate food needs, President Castro said around 5 million of Cuba's 11 million inhabitants need something, but ruled out an appeal for foreign aid. "The country has the necessary resources to recover by itself," he said.
Fellow communist nation China promised anyway to send immediate emergency relief aid.
Electricity was gradually returning to some zones early today, but most of Cuba - including Havana - passed a second night of darkness, with residents relying on candles and gas-lights, and some cooking over wooden fires in the streets.
"It wasn't like this even in the 'Special Period'," said Ms Irma Gonzalez, carrying a plate of food to an elderly neighbor in the sea-front Miramar district of Havana. She was referring to Cuba's term for its economic crisis in the 1990s after the Soviet collapse, when blackouts and food shortages were common.
Communications across Cuba were still limited, but a picture of widespread destruction was emerging, especially in some localities where Michelle's eye passed over and to the economically important sugar and citrus crops.
TV images showed scores of wooden houses razed to the ground, and residents carrying belongings through water up to their chests in the town of Jaguey Grande, in Matanzas, which took one of the worst beatings.
Civil Defense gave a preliminary list of 45,000 homes, 780 industrial installations and 500 schools damaged.