MIAMI, United States.- The latest photos of First Lieutenant Andy Mitchel Ramos Sotolongo, one of the firefighters who died in the fire at the Matanzas Super Tanker Base, have been shared on social networks by official journalist Lázaro Manuel Alonso.
Shortly after the Cuban government declared this Wednesday that it is impossible to identify the skeletal remains of the 14 victims of the incident, Alonso shared the last photos of Ramos Sotolongo at the foot of the fuel tanks that would take the lives of 14 firefighters, among those who are young people from Active Military Service.
First Lieutenant Andy Mitchel Ramos Sotolongo, from the Centro Habana-Old Havana special command number 1, arrived at the area of the incident along with his boss and friend Juan Carlos López González, who heads Command A of the Fire Station in the historic area. from the Cuban capital, according to Alonso in his Facebook post.
“Juan Carlos, his friend and mine since the plane crash, describes him as a man who is always happy. They came from Havana to put out the fire, they got between tanks 1 and 2 to put out the flames of the first one and prevent the combustion from spreading. There was a moment, says Juan Carlos, when they separated and right there came the explosion. Since then, the young firefighter does not know if the burns on his back hurt more or the unexpected goodbye of the friend, ”Alonso wrote.
The images reveal the short distance that separated the firefighters who were fighting the flames from the fuel tanks. Andy Mitchel Ramos Sotolongo died in the supertanker explosion, he and 13 other firefighters.
Juanki Garzón Gutiérrez, a Facebook user, commented on Alonso’s publication: “Andy Mitchel, damn, my fat man, tremendous happy person, enthusiastic, worthy of admiration”, along with an image of the two.
“We were both volunteer firefighters and then he was my Company Chief, when he passed the Active Military Service. We made a great friendship that lasted beyond the Service,” he added.
According to Garzón Gutiérrez, the last moment he shared with Andy Mitchel was just a few months ago, when he went to work to teach him how to dive.
“This pain does not end, but I am still very proud of you brother, how is our friend Osnay, a volunteer firefighter, who showed up at the fire and promised me that he would find you, but he was not successful, this time the mission was not fulfilled . Proud of you, take care of yourself and in another life, I promise you, I will finish your diving course”, he concluded.
This Wednesday, the doctor of Sciences Jorge González Pérez, president of the Cuban Society of Legal Medicine, confirmed that it was “impossible to identify absolutely” the remains of the 14 people who disappeared in the fire at the Matanzas Supertanker Base.
“What we have explained to the relatives is that we have 14 groups of bone remains that correspond to the 14 disappeared people,” said González Pérez.
González Pérez also explained that the expert work had been concentrated around tank 51. “It is estimated that in the center of the fire there were more than 1,000 or 2,000 thousand degrees Celsius, which will be proven criminalistically,” he said.
“In a corpse incinerator like the ones in Cuba or in any country in the world, in two hours, at 800 degrees Celsius, a body turns to ash. In such a way that, based on this concept, the first modeling we did was that if the conditions there were due to the effect of the flames, everything could have disappeared”, added the doctor.
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