One killed in collapse in Old Havana

One person died after being caught in the rubble in Old HavanaThe citizen portal of that municipality of the Cuban capital was quoted by official media CubePad.

“Wednesday afternoon, September 20, the body of a man trapped in the rubble was recovered as a result of a collapse on Compostela Street No. 913, between Velasco and Desambarados, municipality of Old Havana.” The official website published did not specify whether the property collapsed on the same day.

The deceased has been identified as 54-year-old George Louis Zorin Kites.

According to the government portal, municipal officials went to the scene of the incident to help neighbors and take appropriate measures in these cases. The note did not clarify whether the collapse occurred in a single house or a multi-family building, which is common in the area and has suffered extensive deterioration due to their age and decades of lack of maintenance.

In May, several Cuban women and their minor children placed their belongings on a path in the Paseo del Prado. of Old Havana, blocked vehicular traffic, and they rang their pots to demand shelter. Partial collapse of Prado and Virtus building They made them helpless in the place where they stayed.

Construction Minister Rene Meza Villafana said in a radio and television program round table On Tuesday, D853,000 of the houses in Cuba are in poor or fair condition. And they need to be rebuilt or maintained. The figure, which represents 21% of the nation’s property in this category, seems conservative when taking into account the panorama presented by major cities and state shelter systems that have collapsed due to the number of homeless households.

There are 104 hostels or transit communities in Havana alone And in the last two years, protests have been created for many of them because of the poor living conditions and long stays of asylum seekers, sometimes waiting more than 30 years for housing allocation.

Demonstrations of discontent have taken place in Bahia-Plaza in the municipality of Habana del Este; Las Quasimas and El Comodoro, on Arroyo Naranjo; El Cuervo, in Calabazar, and La Lechera, in Old Havana. The highlight of all is the human chain of traffic with the belongings of women and children.

Mesa recalled when Fidel Castro came to power to justify the housing fiasco in Cuba. In 1959 Cuba had fewer than 900,000 households, and only 25% had health services.. “Today, we have completed 4,054,000, including all services (electricity, waste and water) necessary for living,” he explained. He did not clarify whether the thousands of precarious houses built from waste by desperate Cubans, many of them without basic services and at least 60,000 still with dirt floors, were approved by the National People’s Congress.