Two men were trapped under the rubble this Saturday afternoon after the complete collapse of a prefabricated warehouse in the area that once housed the former military unit of the municipality of Colón, in the province of Matanzas.
Both were rescued alive and transported to the hospital, according to reports from the Disaster Risk Reduction Management Center (CGRRD) of Colón, in a statement released by the newspaper Girón.
The collapse occurred at 6:30 PM on Saturday, when the structure completely fell onto the people inside.
The victims are two men aged 28 and 43 who were successfully rescued alive from beneath the rubble of concrete and prefabricated slabs.
The risk management body clarified that the accident was not due to the natural deterioration of the building, but rather to illegal demolition: “The incident was the result of demolition actions carried out by a group of individuals at the site who removed the support points and load-bearing beams that held up the slab, leading to its collapse and trapping the two people who were presumably also engaged in these demolition activities without the proper authorization or safety measures in place.”
Upon learning of the accident, the Colón Fire Command, the Integrated Medical Emergency System, the first secretary of the Communist Party in Colón, chiefs and officers from MININT, the Red Cross, Civil Defense, a crane from UEB Camilo Torres, the OBE, and community neighbors immediately rushed to the scene, the source reported.
The images of the location show a massive broken concrete slab, exposed metal rebar, scattered debris, and firefighters from Cuba working alongside civilians and military personnel to remove the remnants of the structure.
Both injured individuals were taken to the Mario Muñoz Hospital in Colón, where a multidisciplinary team from Public Health conducted additional examinations. The CGRRD confirmed that both are out of danger and have bruises that do not pose a risk to their lives.
The incident at the old military unit is not an isolated occurrence, but rather part of a pattern that is increasingly repeating itself in Cuba: the clandestine dismantling of abandoned buildings to extract construction materials. The housing crisis —with a deficit of hundreds of thousands of homes— and the extreme shortage of cement, steel, and other supplies are driving many citizens to seek materials through informal means, with the deadly risks that this entails.
In the province of Matanzas, this phenomenon has left a trail of documented incidents. Last May, a man was arrested for tearing down blocks from an old university building. In June 2025, two individuals were arrested in Colón for stealing metal beams from a solar park under construction, and two months later, a collapse in Cárdenas left one injured following the systematic theft of beams, windows, and grilles that progressively weakened the structure.
Colón has also recorded other collapses so far in 2026 that are not linked to illegal demolitions: one partial collapse at the former El Confite cafeteria in May, and another in the historic center of Matanzas this month, both without injuries and attributed to structural deterioration worsened by the rains.
The backdrop is an unprecedented housing crisis: the regime itself acknowledged in July 2025 a deficit of over 805,000 homes, with more than 400,000 units needing to be built from scratch and nearly another 400,000 requiring urgent rehabilitation.
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