Rescue teams deployed at the former ESBEC No. 1 in the municipality of Remedios, Villa Clara, were on the verge of reaching the first of the survivors located among the rubble of the collapsed building, according to journalist Henry Omar Pérez's report on Facebook at 10:41 p.m.
The collapse occurred in the abandoned structure known as "La 1," located on the road to Rojas, and the search efforts continued until dawn with the support of firefighters, the Red Cross, and the Integrated Medical Emergency System (SIUM).
"You're very close to one of a survivor!" Pérez wrote in his post, where he detailed that specialized teams are maintaining active communication with at least one of the trapped individuals.
It was also reported that they had managed to pass a little water to that person.
To ensure visibility during the night, rescuers use a generator that keeps the work area illuminated. Additionally, drones were used to geolocate the people trapped among the rubble, which classified the operation as highly complex.
The official preliminary figure, attributed to Susely Morfa González, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in Villa Clara, indicated that there were three people inside the building at the time of the collapse.
At the time of this report, authorities had not confirmed whether any bodies had been recovered from the collapsed structure.
Morefa González and Milaxy Yanet Sánchez Armás went to the site to oversee the operations and coordinate the necessary resources.
The collapsed building was part of the so-called Basic Secondary Schools in the Countryside, educational centers established in the 1970s where students combined studying with agricultural work in a boarding system.
Many of these structures have been in a state of abandonment for years, reflecting the widespread deterioration of public infrastructure in Cuba, where collapses have become frequent due to the lack of maintenance accumulated over decades.
At the close of this report, rescue operations were still ongoing and teams were working to extract the first confirmed survivor from the rubble.
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