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A wooden electric pole with a completely rotted base, cracked and barely held up by makeshift blue wires, threatens to collapse onto a residential building in the 13 de Marzo neighborhood of Cárdenas, Matanzas.
The complaint was published this Friday by Christian Arbolaez, administrator of the group «Cardenenses en Facebook», who warned about the imminent danger that the structure poses to residents of block 4 and to any passerby traveling along the road to Máximo Gómez.
According to Arbolaez, about a week ago, workers from the Electric Company arrived at the site, tied up some cables, and left without making any structural repairs. Since then, no one has returned.
The photographs that accompany the report show pieces of wood breaking away from the base and the pole located just centimeters away from the balconies and windows of the adjacent building.
"Do we have to wait for a tragedy? Apparently, in Cárdenas, there are posts that remain standing purely out of habit," wrote Arbolaez, who mocked the authorities' "strategy": "To wait for it to hold up for one more day, one more week... or for the few minutes of electricity that block 4 receives to completely break apart and fall on someone."
The activist also predicted the outcome he fears: "Afterward, we already know the script: lamentations, investigations, promises… and the blame, almost always, will belong to no one. The one who suffers is whoever has the misfortune of being there and their family."
The comments from internet users on the post confirm that the problem is not isolated. "They fix it when there's an accident," summed up one user with bitter resignation.
Another pointed out that on Ruiz Street, between Obispo and Industria, "there's one worse than that and nothing is being done," while a third person warned that at the corner of Velázquez and Ceres "there's one reaching the floor."
A fourth user noted that the pole at the intersection of Ruiz and Coronel Verdugo—previously reported by Arbolaez—received partial intervention that did not eliminate the danger.
The outrage was direct: "They are incapable even of fixing a pole, so that tomorrow there won’t be a tragedy caused by incompetent, inept, and good-for-nothing people," wrote another neighbor.
One recalled with irony the regime's usual excuse: "You know where the blame will fall: the genocidal blockade."
The case is part of a pattern of systemic deterioration that has already claimed lives. On June 13, a 39-year-old electrician from the Electric Company of Cárdenas was electrocuted while trying to repair a malfunction in the Tenería area between Neptuno and Ceres, in the same city. Doctors were unable to revive him.
Just days earlier, a leaning ETECSA pole in the Pueblo Nuevo neighborhood of Matanzas alarmed the residents. In that case, the Electric Company removed the support holding up the structure and stated that they could not intervene until ETECSA acted first, leaving the pole without any support.
The same dynamic of institutional bouncing seems to be repeating now in the 13 de Marzo neighborhood.
The electric generation deficit in Cuba reached 2,010 MW during peak hours in early June, with power outages in Matanzas lasting up to 85 consecutive hours.
In that energy collapse, the maintenance of physical infrastructure - poles, cables, transformers - is virtually non-existent.
"Hopefully someone decides to repair the pole before having to write a much sadder story," Arbolaez concluded his complaint. For now, the pole remains standing. Out of sheer habit.
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