Cuban Luis Hernández Casanova was rescued alive last Sunday, April 3, after spending more than four hours buried by the collapse of the stones of a rustic oven to make lime, according to official media on the island.
The incident occurred in the community of Hornos de Cal, in the province of Sancti Spíritus, when Hernández Casanova was looking for coal inside the furnace at the time of the collapse, according to a report published by the local newspaper Escambray on your website.
«I had been working there for a long time, but on Sunday I didn’t even have gas to cook with and I went there to collect coal. I always go through the tile and I see everyone and they already know that I am down there, but on Sunday there was not a soul there, so I went in there and started to get coal, “he told the media. man whom everyone in the area knows as “Coco”.
«I already had the coal outside and I said: ‘I’m going to get that stick out of there, because they’re going to put firewood anyway’, but when I go to get the stick out I feel the collapse and I didn’t have time to get out; so I threw myself from the side so that all the stones would not pass me above. They covered me completely, I couldn’t move », he added in his story.
According to what was told by María Gutiérrez Cruz, wife of the owner of the oven, only part of the structure and the door where the sticks are inserted to burn them remained standing. No one knew at the time that a person had been trapped inside.
Maria’s son and a friend were the first to arrive at the scene, they could hear Coco’s voice and gave the warning. An operation was mounted with the Integrated System of Medical Emergencies (Sium), the Rescue and Salvage Brigade, the National Revolutionary Police and the neighbors to save the life of the injured person, the media points out.
When the firefighters were able to approach the place where he had been buried, the two oxygen cylinders were removed from the car, the hose was tied and through a gap between the stones they reached his mask so that they could put the oxygen on him while the rescue work continued, Escambray specifies.
According to the publication, the rescue work lasted about four hours. “I never lost consciousness. The only thing I felt was my legs that were already getting numb and numb,” Coco said after the rescue.
“We think he had rib fractures, skull fractures, but not a single bone was broken. It was necessary to scratch his clothes and boots to attend to him and check him. He had bruises in the calcaneal region, a simple head injury, pressure burns, and signs of dehydration. Veins were channeled, a bladder catheter was placed, everything that is done in life support until he was transferred to the Camilo Cienfuegos Provincial General Hospital,” Dr. Tania Medina Vera, who treated him after being pulled out under the stones, told the local media.
“When they took me out, a town was there and everyone applauding, crying and getting into the ambulance, I said goodbye to everyone. When I saw myself outside I said: I got rid of this », she told Escambray the survivor of the collapse who, according to the media, turned 67 this April 8.
