The roof of a portal of an old house collapsed this Saturday in the center of Santa Isabel de las Lajas, a municipality in the province of Cienfuegos, as shown in videos shared on social media that captured the moment of the collapse.
The images reveal a disturbing detail: several people nearby were looking at the structure before it collapsed, as if they knew the collapse was imminent, suggesting that the building's deterioration was visible and known to the neighbors.
The street appears wet in the recordings, indicating that it was raining or had rained shortly before the incident, a condition that may have accelerated the collapse of an already weakened structure.
After the collapse, the sidewalk was covered in debris —bricks, wood, and tiles— in front of a colonial-style building with evident structural damage.
According to the preliminary information released by Bernardo Madrazo Hernández , "no human losses have been reported."
"So far, the causes of the collapse and the total extent of the material damages have not been officially confirmed," Madrazo Hernández specified in his post.
The incident is part of a housing crisis affecting all of Cuba: nearly 35% of the country's real estate stock is in fair or poor condition, and the housing deficit exceeds 929,000 units.
The porticoes of old houses—structures with columns and roofs that extend over the sidewalk—are particularly susceptible to collapse when rain saturates materials that have already been weakened by decades of neglect.
This pattern is prevalent throughout the island. In September 2026, two elderly people died in Havana after the collapse of the entrance to their home, and that same month, the rainfall caused 26 total collapses and 122 partial ones in the capital.
The province of Cienfuegos is not immune to these incidents either: last June, a gas explosion in Rodas collapsed three houses and damaged another 16, and that same month a fire destroyed the Ranchón de Santa Isabel de las Lajas.
Cuban officials estimate that around 1,000 collapses occur annually in Havana, a figure that reflects the extent of a crisis that, as the case of Lajas demonstrates, is not limited to the capital but also affects municipalities in the interior of the country.
The state housing construction plan for 2025 barely reached 22% of its goal—2,382 completed units out of 10,795 planned—exacerbating a deficit that the rains turn, again and again, into foreseen tragedies.
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