Hurricanes Like Gustav and Hanna Seem Only to Matter If They Hit America

'The dog that didn't bark' was how one US analyst described hurricane Gustav. From a US perspective, he's right. Gustav did not match the build-up. The New Orleans levees held.

But a few hundred miles south, and it's a different story. In Haiti, Gustav – and its little sister, Hannah – have killed more than 160 and left hundreds of thousands homeless. In neighboring Cuba, 90,000 houses have been damaged or destroyed. Cuba's southern Isle of Youth is a scene of total devastation. State-run media, which tends to put a positive spin on things, says the destruction wreaked by Gustav is equal to the last 14 major storms to hit the island combined.

If you are Cuban, or Haitian, the dog most certainly did bark.Were we slow to notice? An accident of geography is one reason hurricanes in both Haiti and Cuba tend not to get the international attention they deserve; any hurricane that strikes either country is usually heading north, and about to threaten the United States. The American side of the story then dominates the news. What has happened in one place is squeezed out by the fevered speculation of what might happen in another.

And anyway, in the particular case of Haiti, forever tagged it seems with the label 'poorest country in the western hemisphere', an awful lot has to go wrong for the world to notice. Massive deforestation and a virtually non-existent infrastructure mean that even a mild tropical storm routinely kills dozens of people. It might take a hurricane a few hours to pass from Port au Prince to Miami, but it is menacing two different worlds. Visitors to Haiti cannot fail but be shocked by the contrast. Ad Melkert, associate administrator of the UN Development Program, says: 'The poverty in the rain and mud of Haiti I witnessed is nothing less than a disgrace.'

In Cuba, it is the government's success, rather than its failure, at dealing with hurricanes which can obscure the extreme difficulty of the situation for thousands of people in the months afterwards. Days before the storm arrives, the authorities put into place a well-honed drill and order everybody in its projected path to leave their homes and take refuge either with relatives or in state-provided shelters. Staying put is not an option.

As a result very few people are ever killed by hurricanes in Cuba. That is the headline. But impressive as that is, it is not total compensation for those who will spend the next weeks barely surviving as they sift through what is left of their homes, struggling to find water and cooking on scraps of charcoal.

Acknowledging the scale of the problem, the government, under Raul Castro, has shown itself open to offers of aid from world donors. Russia has sent two cargo planes. The US government has offered $100,000 – providing the aid goes through relief agencies, not the Cuban government. It is conceivable that US restrictions which currently prevent private American aid being sent to the island will be temporarily lifted.

Cuban hurricane victims, like those in Haiti, don't of course care where the help comes from, as long as it comes soon.

· Stephen Gibb was the BBC correspondent in Cuba from 2002 to 200