Rescue operations and urgent evacuations continued in Cuba on Friday, as people remained trapped by severe flooding left by the torrential rains from Hurricane Melissa on rural areas and towns across the affected provinces on the eastern end of the island.

Cuban state television reporter Lázaro Manuel Alonso said emergency evacuations were ongoing in the province of Granma of residents in several communities along the Cauto River, Cuba’s longest and the site of a major dam.

The number of people evacuated from Cauto Embarcadero, Melones, Cayama and other villages was expected to rise up to 7,500, Alonso said.

“The Cauto River Basin is currently facing its critical point of flooding, a complex phenomenon where intense rains, dam releases, runoff from the Sierra Maestra mountains, and the dangerous penetration of the sea that blocks the river mouth converge,” Alonso said on Facebook.

Cauto Embarcadero is close to the Cauto del Paso dam, one of the largest in eastern Cuba. On Thursday evening, the local government of Rio Cauto municipality reassured residents that the dam was not going to collapse or suddenly overflow and that the flooding was mainly due to the rain from Melissa. There was no evacuation order in the last publication in the government’s official account on Facebook as of 10:47 pm Thursday.

By early Friday, about 2,500 people had been evacuated from the community of Cauto Embarcadero and were being housed in several schools in Bayamo, the province’s capital city, local station Radio Bayamo reported.

The local Granma TV station said the evacuation was a complex operation carried out by combined forces from the Bayamo Fire Command, along with reinforcements from the provinces of Camagüey, Holguín and Santiago de Cuba, members of the Las Tunas Border Guard Troops and Red Cross workers.

“Cauto Embarcadero was flooded by the overflowing of the Cauto River downstream from the Cauto el Paso dam. Granma’s largest reservoir was releasing water at a rate of 4,000 cubic meters per second due to the massive influx of water,” the station reported.

Desperation has grown among relatives of the people reported trapped since communications were disrupted in most of the island’s eastern region. Relatives have been using social media to publish urgent calls for information about their loved ones.

As of Friday morning, some people reportedly remained trapped by flooding in Cauto del Paso, in the roof of a bodega and on top of a roof of the village’s electric substation, their relatives said on social media.

“My son’s father called me in a panic from Cauto del Paso,” Day Figueredo Pino said on Facebook. “They’re on top of a bodega in that town. His phone’s [battery] is at 13 percent. They were supposed to come and get him, but so far no one has shown up. Are they going to wait for the worst to happen?”

The devastation left by Melissa, which ravaged eastern Cuba as a powerful Cat 3 storm on Wednesday, is widespread and it became clear Friday that thousands were left homeless in the struggling nation and will need immediate help.

In Palma Soriano, a town in Santiago de Cuba province directly hit by the hurricane, many lost their homes, Adriano Valagussa, a Catholic priest at the Our Lady of the Rosary Parish, told the Miami Herald. He and other members of his church had been cleaning up after Melissa destroyed part of the church’s roof.

“In the town, many houses were destroyed or their roofs were blown off,” he said. “There are people who found refuge with relatives, but there are people who I think the government is going to have to give a house, or something. It’s a disaster.”

Valagussa said the parish was already cooking lunch regularly for about 60 seniors, pregnant women and others in need but had no resources to provide food to more people, unless more donations poured in.

So far no fatalities have been reported from the hurricane, which the country’s leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel, has highlighted on state television. Cuban state media have shown him touring some of the provinces affected and images of the rescue operations, in an effort to showcase the government’s response to the disaster.

Humanitarian aid to Cuba

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it was ready to offer Cuba and other Caribbean nations ravaged by the storm, humanitarian aid.

“The Department is working to provide assistance to people in several countries affected by Hurricane Melissa. We will be announcing the details of our proposed program once we complete discussions with implementing organizations. Our basic approach is to ensure that aid is directly distributed based on need and not on political affiliation or similar considerations.”

The State Department said it has deployed its Disaster Assistance Response Team to the Caribbean.

The team is made of experts from across the State Department, along with two urban search-and-rescue teams from the fire departments of Fairfax County, Virginia, and Los Angeles County, California. It is responsible for assessing the situation and identifying priority humanitarian needs.

“The United States stands with Jamaica, Haiti, the Bahamas, and the Cuban people as they respond to the impacts of the hurricane and remains prepared to swiftly deliver emergency relief items to communities most severely affected,” the department said.

Shortly after Rubio said the Trump administration stood ready to provide “immediate humanitarian aid to Cuba,” Cuba’s foreign vice minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío said Cuban authorities contacted the State Department and were “awaiting clarification on how and in what way they are prepared to assist.”

On Friday afternoon, Johana Tablada, a Cuban foreign affairs official, said the Cuban embassy in Washington reached out to the State Department

“So far the U.S. has not made any concrete offer nor answered questions asked about the Secretary of State’s announcement,” she said.

Tablada, said that in recent years, the U.S. government has made “respectful” aid offerings that have been accepted.

It is unclear if the Cuban government would ultimately accept humanitarian aid from the U.S. government, which it has generally rejected. Following Férnadez de Cossio’s statement, Roberto Morales Ojeda, the Communist Party number two official who has gained prominence as a possible Díaz-Canel successor, signaled that the offer, which he called “outrageous,” was not well received.

“If that government truly wanted to support our people, they would have unconditionally lifted the criminal blockade and removed us from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, where we should never have been,” he said on X. The Cuban government routinely uses the word blockade to refer to the decades-old U.S. embargo.

In the meantime, Cuban diplomats have given public thanks for donations made or promised by governments in Venezuela and Colombia. The United Nations said Wednesday it allocated $4 million each to Haiti and Cuba from its Central Emergency Fund to help with Melissa’s aftermath. The head of the World Food Program in Cuba, Etienne Labande, said 617 tons of rice, beans and cooking oil were ready for distribution on the island.

Labande said 700,000 people will need help from the program for up to six months.

“In Cuba we have experienced a catastrophe of enormous proportions, “ the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba said in a letter calling for urgent humanitarian donations. “The situation of national tragedy in which the hurricane leaves us now adds to the already difficult daily reality of our people, with shortages of basic goods, prolonged power cuts, and high inflation with prices unaffordable for many.”

The bishops said “everything” is needed: “food, clothing, mattresses, household items, roofs... to help many brothers and sisters, especially so many elderly people living alone.”

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