A Cuban woman who recently moved shared on Facebook this Friday the effort of carrying buckets of water up to the third floor of her building after the pumping turbine broke.
Yenia Mayea reported in a video lasting 54 seconds that the breakdown occurred shortly after moving in, while she had not yet been able to transfer all her belongings from her previous home.
"Back at my house in the countryside, I have a tank, but unfortunately, I couldn't bring it because there was no transportation. The only thing I could bring was the fridge, which I thought was essential, but here, my loves, everything is essential," he explained.
Due to the lack of water even for washing dishes, Mayea took a bucket and a rope to transport the liquid manually to her home. Her father-in-law joined the effort, but both ended up exhausted after carrying two buckets up to the third floor.
"We had quite a task carrying these two buckets of water up to the third floor; you can imagine the effort we had to put in. My father-in-law was already at his limit," he recounted.
The woman also described her fear of falling while carrying the water due to the physical effort required. "I was just thinking about whether I would fall headfirst with the strength it takes to lift that bucket of water," she confessed.
The episode reflects the difficulties faced by many Cuban families when pump system failures disrupt the water supply and force them to transport water manually to their homes.
In July, specialists from Aguas de La Habana reported that over 500,000 residents of Havana were affected by the water crisis, compared to 200,000 in April.
At the national level, approximately 2.7 million Cubans lack regular access to drinking water, and several million receive it intermittently.
The problem has structural roots, as 87% of the water system depends on the electrical grid, meaning that every blackout automatically halts the pumping.
In cities like Havana, between 40% and 70% of the water pumped is lost due to leaks before it reaches homes, in a sewage system built between 1905 and 1915 for a city of 600,000 inhabitants that now accommodates 1.8 million.
On Friday, a new breakdown in the Gato System left neighborhoods in Regla, La Habana del Este, San Miguel del Padrón, Guanabacoa, and Diez de Octubre without water supply, with no date for restoration.
Images of Cubans carrying water up stairs have multiplied in recent weeks. At the beginning of August, two girls of around seven years old were seen carrying gallons by themselves from the cistern of a primary school in Havana.
In Santiago de las Vegas, elderly people living alone carry buckets after running behind water trucks. Furthermore, days earlier a neighbor reported that contaminated water resembling sewage was coming from their pipes.
In the absence of solutions, the informal market charges up to 60,000 pesos for a water truck in Havana, the equivalent of nearly 19 minimum monthly salaries.
Filed under: