Testimony of a firefighter injured in the Matanzas fire: “Almost 48 hours holding a hose”

A Cuban firefighter who was one of the first to go to the August fire last year at the Supertanker Base from Matanzas recounted the vicissitudes after the incident and assured that he had to hold a hose for almost 48 hours.

“That was hell. You would pour a bottle of water on your head and it would evaporate before reaching your neck. The liquid burned you. The cape was smoking. I went four days without bathing, and almost 48 hours holding a hose. "I just went down to eat and returned to my position," told the local newspaper Giron.

Lian Michel Balsinde Pino, who was already demobilized from Matanzas Firefighters Command 1, decided to voluntarily join the firefighters containing the fire after hearing the news of the fire.

This young man was one of the last to see his friend alive Elier Manuel Correa, one of the firefighters who was part of the first command that arrived at the industrial zone and was killed by the explosion of the first tank.

Lian Michel himself said that he was miraculously saved from the shock wave of the first explosion in the early hours of August 6, as he was next to the cube wall and during the roar he was able to take shelter behind a vehicle.

After the first explosion, the heat stroke did not hurt him much, but he understood that his companion, due to the position where he was, had lost his life.

“There were more than 10! As the hours passed we came to understand the language of fire. It warned us, first it roared, then we heard a whistle, and then the Baaam! with the flare towards the sky and the shock wave in all directions. Only thousandths of seconds passed, but in that short time we managed to take shelter,” he says.

Finally, this young man suffered a severe blow to the hip while fleeing one of the explosions for which he had to be hospitalized.

Although the regime has described the extinguishing of this fire, considered one of the worst disasters on the island, as heroic, it has not yet explained why it brought four young recruits of Compulsory Military Service to the front line of an event of such magnitude without experience: Leo Alejandro Doval Pérez de Prado (19 years), Fabián Naranjo Núñez (20 years), Michel Rodríguez Román and Adriano Rodríguez Gutiérrez who are among the total of 17 deaths.

Extinguishing the fire took six days and nights. More than a hundred people were hospitalized, a community of twenty houses displaced, and only after the flames were put out was the regime able to begin the search for 14 firefighters who remained missing.

The grandmother of the youngest deceased firefighter, Leo Alejandro Doval Pérez de Prado, He questioned the sending of the Compulsory Military Service recruits to the place: Who is going to take responsibility for taking those children there? His grandson had turned 19 and received only 15 days of training as a firefighter, he stated.

There is still no government response on the issue, nor on the security failures that caused the accident and the death of the victims.