Havana/A bus collided with a cart in the early hours of this Monday on the National Highway, leaving 27 injured, four of them with life-threatening injuries. The incident occurred just three days after another massive accident at kilometer 183 of the same road. This time, the impact took place in the vicinity of the community of La Caoba, municipality of Venezuela, in Ciego de Ávila.
The official newspaper Invader reported in your Facebook page that the majority of the injured were transferred to the Antonio Luaces Iraola Provincial General Teaching Hospital, and the rest, to the local polyclinic. A witness lamented in the same publication the delay in receiving help: “At seven in the morning the first ambulance had not yet arrived,” he wrote. According to his testimony, the injured were helped by “neighbors in carts and with their own means.”
The accident involved a bus transporting workers from the El Fortín Credit and Commerce Cooperative. Images spread on social networks show the left side of the vehicle completely destroyed.
A fourth serious patient, with a pelvic fracture, remained in the polyclinic of the Venezuela municipality
Dr. Inés Padrón González, specialist in Intensive Care and Emergencies, later reported that the Avilanian hospital had received 20 patients, although “not all cases have arrived.” Of those admitted to that center, three were life-threatening: two with severe head trauma and another with “abdominal trauma with free fluid in the cavity,” whose condition was evaluated for possible surgery. A fourth serious patient, with a pelvic fracture, remained in the Venezuela polyclinic. The rest of the injured were reported stable, with minor injuries and orthopedic trauma.
Last Friday, when a Yutong bus left the road at kilometer 183 of the National Highway, two women died: Mikenia Valenciano Godínez, 36 years old, originally from Songo La Maya, Santiago de Cuba, although resident in Havana; and Dainé Rodríguez Hernández, 22, also from Santiago.
Of the more than 20 injured people left by that incident, two remain in critical condition, connected to artificial ventilation in the intensive care unit of the Cienfuegos provincial hospital. Two other patients are reported to be in serious condition, with hip fractures and post-traumatic hemorrhages.
In just three days, these two massive accidents on the National Highway have left almost fifty people injured and have exposed, once again, the lamentable state of the main road in Cuba. The temporal proximity of both accidents underlines that Cuban roads have become increasingly lethal scenarios.
