The heavy rains on Thursday caused severe flooding in the La Victoria neighborhood of Centro Habana, where water entered homes and businesses, partially submerging a car.
A video shared on Facebook by Liena Lopez Delgado showcases the extent of the flooding and surpassed 93,000 views within a few hours. The images highlight the impact of the rain on a family home and a local butcher shop.
"The car is almost halfway submerged in water. It's for the butcher shop because water got into the butcher shop," can be heard from the video’s creator.
September 2026 has seen a series of events of this nature in the Cuban capital: in the middle of the month, intense rains left more than 300 mm in 24 hours in some areas of Havana, with 26 houses completely collapsed and 122 experiencing partial collapses.
The event also left 148 people housed in state centers and 762 who self-evacuated with family or friends. The hardest-hit municipalities were Boyeros, Diez de Octubre, Cotorro, San Miguel del Padrón, Arroyo Naranjo, La Lisa, and Cerro.
This Thursday, the flooding was not restricted to the La Victoria neighborhood. Streets were also reported to be flooded in Luyanó, Cuatro Caminos, El Vedado, Línea Street, and Fifth Avenue, according to reports collected by Infobae.
In some areas, the water reached knee height, and it was necessary to use a tractor to transport residents between flooded zones.
The underlying problem is structural. The sewage system of Havana was built between 1908 and 1914 for a city of about 600,000 inhabitants, and today it must serve nearly two million people.
The network has approximately 1,755 kilometers of pipelines, mostly outdated and unable to evacuate large volumes of water quickly.
The chronic accumulation of garbage in the streets blocks drains and sewers, worsening the drainage collapse during heavy downpours.
The Institute of Meteorology (INSMET) warned this Thursday that a frontal trough will bring at least three days of rain to western Cuba, with showers and thunderstorms expected starting this Friday.
The organism clarified that "it is not a cold front, but it can bring rain," which heralds new days of risk for urban infrastructure that has been unable to meet the demands of the city for decades.
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