A fire at a landfill in the town of Santa Marta, in the municipality of Cárdenas, Matanzas, once again highlighted this Sunday the chronic waste management crisis affecting the area, according to a report posted on Facebook by independent journalist Christian Arbolaez.
The fire broke out near the corner by the Police station, a spot where trash accumulates permanently due to the lack of collection. One of the containers was completely melted, and the neighbors themselves had to step in to try to save the second one.
"Between the accumulation of garbage and those who end up burning it because it is not collected, the situation continues to worsen," Arbolaez wrote.
What upset the residents the most was the response from the emergency services: the fire station is less than 500 meters from the site, but according to neighbors, the responders arrived when much of the fire had already burned out.
"The most outrageous thing, according to their complaints, is that the firefighters are located less than 500 meters from the site and, despite this, they claim that the response was slow and they arrived when much of it had already burned down," reported the journalist. No injuries were reported.
The incident is not the first of its kind in the area. At the end of June, an improvised dump at the corner of Ayón and Coronel Verdugo, in Cárdenas, also caught fire and required firefighter intervention. Weeks later, in August, residents of the same municipality continued to call for a solution due to the accumulation of garbage in the streets, with no response from the authorities.
The root of the problem is structural. In May, the municipal company Comunales de Matanzas acknowledged that they were only operating 11 out of their 24 garbage collection trucks, immobilized by the shortage of diesel and absenteeism. In the absence of service, many residents choose to burn the accumulated garbage, which in turn creates new fires in containers and makeshift landfills, along with toxic smoke that seeps into homes.
The health consequences are serious. In May, a provincial alert for hepatitis A was issued in Matanzas, with 18 active cases in the Versalles neighborhood linked to unsanitary conditions. The proliferation of mosquitoes has also increased the risk of dengue and chikungunya throughout the province.
Santa Marta has been experiencing this situation since at least September 2025, when the town —just a few meters from Varadero— was already sinking in garbage with documented unsanitary conditions and the proliferation of vectors.
In August of this year, rivers and the bay of Matanzas appeared overflowing with waste in photographs that circulated on social media.
Arbolaez concluded his complaint with a question that encapsulates the neighbors' desperation: "How long is the garbage going to keep piling up in the streets?"
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