MIAMI, United States. — This Thursday a fire was reported in the Riomar buildingan almost abandoned property located in the municipality of Havana de Playa.
Images provided to CubaNet by the journalist Mario J. Pentón show how the smoke came out of the building in the morning today. In front of the building, completely in ruins, there was also a fire truck.
Located a few meters from the well-known La Puntilla Shopping Center, the Riomar building is one of the emblematic buildings built in Havana during the early second half of the last century. The project was carried out by the architect Cristóbal Martínez Márquez and the first stage of the work was completed in 1957. Initially, the property of the building was in the hands of the Mercantile Company “Horizontal Property Miramar SA”.
The Riomar was considered one of the most elegant buildings of its kind in the capital. In addition to its 11 floors of apartments, it had a lobby, reception, mailboxes for correspondence, telephone board, party rooms, two swimming pools, six elevators and a parking space for each of its more than 200 apartments, among other amenities.
Despite the disastrous conditions in which the property is found, some of the families who retain the original ownership of their apartments still reside there, a fact that has prevented the island’s regime from maneuvering to convert it into a hotel.
The fire recorded today in the Riomar building is the umpteenth incident of this type that has been reported on the Island in recent weeks. The worst of them was the explosion at the Matanzas Supertanker Base, which caused a large fire that caused four of the eight fuel storage tanks in the industrial zone of that province to explode.
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