A hole in the ceiling and the image of the interior of a house that peeks through the hole is what a partial collapse left in the early hours of this Saturday in a central area of Havana. Without injuries or loss of human lives, the collapse alarmed the residents of the building where dozens of families live.
“We heard a rumble and when we woke up and went to look, all there was was dust,” they tell 14ymedio the residents of the building located on Galiano street between Zanja and Dragones, a very busy block and where there are several private businesses selling products that work during the day.
“It was lucky that this happened at dawn because people are circulating here all the time,” details one of the residents of the building who, at noon today, was waiting on the sidewalk in front of the collapse, while the debris brigades cleaned the place and They placed shoring timbers.
“This had been in very poor condition for years because the roof was made of wooden beams that have been damaged by leaks. I always tried to go down the sidewalk when I passed by here,” a retiree who lives around the corner explains to this newspaper. “This building is a large site, they may have painted the facade but inside it is in very poor condition.”
A few meters from El Curita park, a public and private transport node in the Cuban capital, the property that suffered damage occupies a large part of the block. With its columns and arches, the place had been deteriorating for years due to lack of maintenance and the multiple internal divisions to which it had been subjected.
“If anything can be said to be Havana, it is this piece here, so if this has already fallen, we can know what will happen to the rest,” warned another resident of nearby Reina Street. “Tourists always took a lot of photos of this place because the portal was so beautiful, but now I don’t see any of them with their cameras to come and show this part.”
Above the heads of the workers removing the rubble is the white wall of a house, the blue-touched staircase that leads to a barbecue, and a door that perhaps leads to a room where, until yesterday, someone slept.
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