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Osmani Rosales Núñez, a worker from the Electric Company of Cárdenas, passed away this Saturday after suffering an electric shock while working in the Tenería area between Neptuno and Ceres, in the city of Cárdenas, in the province of Matanzas.
According to the information from journalist Christian Arbolaez on his Facebook profile, initial reports indicated that Osmani had been taken alive to the Moncada Polyclinic and later referred to the hospital, where doctors attempted to resuscitate him unsuccessfully.
He was 39 years old, having just turned that age, and resided in Cristina and Portilla, in the city of Cárdenas.
A person who was present at the hospital described the seriousness of the injuries in the comments: "I saw him when he arrived, they did everything they could to revive him, but I really knew it was difficult; he was completely burned," he detailed.
As Arboláez himself summarized when announcing the news, "behind every blackout, every breakdown, and every fallen cable, there are men who go out to work under difficult conditions to try to restore the little electricity to homes. This Saturday, one of them could not return home."
The news generated a wave of condolences as well as indignation on social media, where neighbors and coworkers remembered him as a dedicated man with a good character.
"An excellent worker, a magnificent human being; it is very unfortunate what happened," wrote someone close to the deceased.
Other comments pointed directly to the conditions in which these workers operate. "Situations like this should be avoided. They work with minimal physical protection and face excessive risk, especially during blackout hours, and look at how this young man's life ends, undoubtedly leaving a devastated family behind," a forum user stated.
The death of Osmani occurs amid an energy crisis that has led to citizen protests in Cárdenas due to outages lasting more than 26 hours, while in Matanzas, power outages have exceeded 67 consecutive hours without electricity.
That same Saturday, the Electric Union reported a capacity of only 1,200 MW against a demand of 2,580 MW, with a projected deficit of 1,780 MW for peak hour.
It is precisely the linemen who go out to repair outages under that extreme pressure, with deteriorated infrastructure and limited protective equipment.
The case is not isolated. In September 2025, a worker died from electrocution in Bauta, Artemisa, and that same month a lineman was severely electrocuted in the municipality of San Miguel del Padrón in the capital, where neighbors had to rescue him due to the absence of firefighters.
In February 2026, a electrician was injured with burns at the Habana 220 kV Substation, and since 2022 at least six deaths of linemen have been documented in various provinces across the country.
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