MIAMI, United States. – The more than 400 people evacuated after the explosion that occurred on January 7 in the Protective Work of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, in the town of Melones, in the municipality of Rafael Freyre (Holguín), returned to their homes this Friday, according to with a report from the Ministry of the Armed Forces (MINFAR).
“The Provincial Defense Council, the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior have agreed on the return to their homes of the protected people, whose houses are located at a radius distance that no longer offers danger of future damage derived from the work. accident,” indicates the MINFAR note.
For his part, Joel Queipo Ruiz, first secretary of the PCC in Holguín, he assured on Facebook that “specialized actions continued to be carried out within the limits of a certain radius outward from the center of the place.”
“It is still not possible to enter the specific site of the incident because the explosion process is active, although with less force than in previous days, but with dangers to the physical integrity of any human action,” he said.
However, MINFAR only limited itself to saying that “as soon as conditions permit, the place will be accessed with all the established protection measures” and assured that it maintained contact with the relatives of “the disappeared”, of whom it did not offer no new information.
The MINFAR, according to its own note, continues the investigation of the events to clarify the origin and consequences of the detonation that occurred on January 7, which forced the evacuation of more than 400 people from the surrounding area.
On the same day of the incident, MINFAR announced that 13 people were missing. The information was limited to a list with the names of the missing (two with the rank of major, two second non-commissioned officers; and nine, identified as “soldiers” who were serving the Military service).
The brief note at that time only added that his relatives had been informed and investigative actions at the scene of the incident continued. Since then, the competent authorities have barely offered information on how the search efforts are progressing.
“They have not searched at any time. They told the relatives that they could not do it because they could cause more explosions and they could not risk more lives, and they had to wait 72 hours,” he told this Thursday. CubaNet Jesús Antonio, uncle of recruit Liander José García Oliva, 19 years old.
“Yesterday [miércoles 8 de enero] They went to the parents’ house and reported that there was no chance of life, that if anyone was alive they would have already tried to leave. It hurts me because they were left for dead without looking for them.”
Although there has been no official communication in this regard, other relatives and friends confirmed to this medium that the authorities denied that they could still be alive, and that they are not even trying to recover the bodies. The temperature inside the warehouses and the possibility of new explosions would be the reason that slows down the rescue efforts.
This Thursday, the official newspaper Granma published an article to highlight the evacuation work carried out and the courage of soldiers and officials in being close to explosive zones. In the article they omitted whether they had attempted rescue tasks, and what the experts believed about the condition of the missing people.
