Rescue teams that worked throughout the night amid the rubble of a collapsed structure in Remedios, Villa Clara, retrieved this morning the lifeless bodies of the last two people who remained trapped.
The journalist Henry Omar Pérez, from the Cuban News Agency, confirmed the tragic outcome on his Facebook.
“At 6:50 AM this morning, after intense hours of work, they were able to extract the lifeless bodies of the last two trapped EPD,” the communicator wrote on social media.
The current balance is two deceased individuals and one person rescued alive.
The survivor was transferred from Remedios to the Arnaldo Milián Castro Hospital, located in the main municipality, as the source stated.
The Collapse and the Rescue Operation
The collapse occurred this Wednesday at the former Basic Secondary School in the Field (ESBEC) No. 1, known as "La 1", on the road to Rojas, in the municipality of Remedios.
The structure collapsed completely while several people were inside.
Unconfirmed local sources indicated that those present were extracting rebar and other construction materials, a widespread practice in Cuba due to chronic shortages of supplies, when the collapse occurred.
Authorities initially estimated that about three people were inside, although unverified reports on social media raised that number to 14.
The trapped individuals were identified as natives of Caibarién, a neighboring coastal municipality.
An operation was immediately deployed, described by the authorities themselves as of "high danger and complexity."
The Provincial Fire Command, the Red Cross, and the Integrated Medical Emergency System (SIUM) arrived with heavy machinery—cranes and shovels—for debris removal, and a generator was set up for nighttime lighting.
Drones, contact with those trapped, and first rescue
Firefighters used drones for precise geolocation of the victims among the debris, a technique that Cuba started using since the explosion of the Hotel Saratoga in 2022.
At 10:11 PM on Wednesday, the rescue teams were maintaining active contact with at least one person trapped and had provided them with water.
Around midnight, the rescuers managed to extract one person alive. The search for the others continued without pause until dawn this Thursday.
The first secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Communist Party in Villa Clara, Susely Morfa González, and the municipal authority Milaxy Yanet Sánchez Armás oversaw the operations on site.
The collapse in Remedios is part of an alarming pattern of failures occurring across Cuba as a result of decades of neglect.
In July, two men were trapped in Colón, Matanzas, due to an illegal demolition for the extraction of materials.
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