A public transport bus on route P8 hit the Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski in Havana on Wednesday, just in front of Central Park. The vehicle, Yutong brand and number 604, collided at dawn with one of the columns and knocked it over completely.
At the stroke of nine in the morning, experts from the Ministry of the Interior were in the place, trying to determine the causes of the event, and a crowd of passers-by gathered around.
Line P8, which goes from Villa Panamericana to Reparto Eléctrico, in the capital, is highly trafficked, but at that time, the driver was going back to the Calvario terminal. There were only two minor injuries, according to the newspaper Granma, which quotes Juan Caballero Martínez, director of the Provincial Transportation Company.
“I would not want to be in the shoes of that driver, here you cannot come at 50 kilometers per hour, you have to come at 20 or 30”
In the images taken by this newspaper, the presence of hotel managers and workers wearing helmets and vests is also notable.
“The column is not a support column, it is a decorative column,” he explains to 14ymedio an industrial engineer who was part of the group of onlookers who approached the place, right where they are several boutiques deluxe, on the ground floor of the hotel. “It is original but it does not have a concrete base with steel, it is simply cement and a water pipe. This column is not supporting the weight of the building.”
The accident aroused all kinds of opinions among the neighbors, who allowed themselves to speculate what could have happened. “I don’t understand how fast I was going to crash like this,” said one of them. “I would not want to be in the shoes of that driver, here you cannot come at 50 kilometers per hour, you have to come at 20 or 30”.
“People had to go out the window because no one came to help them,” said another. “They say here that the driver fell asleep but they still have not said anything officially. What a pity, a hotel that not long ago was completely repaired.”
The Manzana Lempinski is a luxurious hotel inaugurated in 2017, the first 5-star Plus, which the residents of the area call “the spaceship”. Located in the old Manzana de Gómez, the accommodation is designed for a type of tourism with high standards, very far from the reality of the streets.
For this reason, it was the subject of several performances by the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. In one of them, he organized a raffle so that any Cuban could spend a night in the exclusive establishment for 2 CUC the ticket. In another, he photographed himself with a huge mace just inches from the window of the Giorgio G. VIP store in the gallery.
The artist, in prison for four months, did not cause any damage in those low, unlike this Wednesday a state transport vehicle.
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