Juan Diego Rodriguez reports in 14yMedio from Havana via Translating Cuba:
A Man Dies in Another Partial Collapse in Central Havana
A man lost his life early this Thursday in a partial collapse in Central Havana. The Municipal Assembly of People’s Power itself reported the event on its networks. It took place on Maloja Street, between Oquendo and Márquez González, when the roof of a house fell off and, with it, part of the structure collapsed. They did not give any information about the deceased.
In the images released by the authorities, firefighters and other emergency services can be seen before the sun had dawned, but around 11:00 in the morning, 14ymedio witnessed very little trace of the tragedy. A group of neighbors gathered at the door of the affected home, silent and observing the passersby with suspicion. Parked a few meters away was a truck from which some workers were unloading wooden poles, the kind normally used to prop up collapsed buildings. “Can you bring me some more wood?” one of them asked the driver. “It’s to resolve a little house there.”
This Thursday is the second accident of this nature that has occurred in the Cuban capital in just over a week. On September 20, another man, Jorge Luis Jorrin Guides, 54, died in an interior collapse in Old Havana, specifically at number 913 Compostela Street, between Velasco and Desamparados.
Both Central Havana and Old Havana are frequent scenes of building collapses due to the lack of maintenance of old structures. The situation is complicated by the accumulation of humidity and the incidence of saltpeter.
Last March, a woman and her baby were injured in another similar incident. Discontent over the precarious conditions of the infrastructure led to a group of families on Habana Street, between Aguiar and Muralla, in the oldest area of ??the capital, taking to the streets with their belongings in August 2022 as a sign of protest, after the roof of the building collapsed and days passed without a solution.
Some buildings do not resist and end up collapsing completely, as happened in November 2022 in Refugio, between Prado and Morro, where a large operation of fire trucks and even rescue dogs was required to remove three people from the rubble.
A month earlier, in Old Havana, a girl died and three other people were injured, two women and a child. The four were trapped under the roof that collapsed on them, early in the morning, on the lot where they lived, on Sol street, between Egido and Villegas.