Part of the fourth-floor ceiling of a former hotel at Águila and San Miguel collapsed without causing injuries.
14ymedio, Havana, September 30, 2026 – Part of the ceiling of the fourth floor of a building located at Águila 368, on the corner of San Miguel, in Centro Habana, collapsed this Wednesday at around 6:10 in the morning. The collapse caused no injuries, but residents fear that it is a warning of a larger collapse in a building where more than 300 people live.
“Fortunately, there were no human losses and no one was injured,” Juan Goberna, director of the Cuban Network for People with Disabilities, who lives with his wife on the second floor, told 14ymedio. The activist warns, however, that the deterioration of the building and the lack of repairs leave residents under the threat of a total collapse.
On the top floor of the building, a large section of the ceiling collapsed and now allows the sky to be seen directly from inside. Below, pieces of concrete, dust and other debris cover the floor and accumulate near the metal railing of the staircase. Alongside the exposed and rusted reinforcing bars of the structure, damp stains spread across the sections of ceiling that are still standing.
“A neighbor began screaming and people jumped out of bed to see what was happening, but it wasn’t until it began to get light that we could see how serious what had happened was”
“I was already awake when I heard the crash and the whole building shook,” Goberna says. “A neighbor began screaming and people jumped out of bed to see what was happening, but it wasn’t until it began to get light that we could see how serious what had happened was. To make matters worse, it has been raining since early this morning, so water has been coming in through the opening.”
The activist explains that “there are neighbors who are on the street right now and don’t want to go into the building for fear that more fragments will continue falling.” Those in the worst situation, he continues, “are the people on the fourth floor, but the collapse also damaged part of the third-floor ceiling because of the weight of the debris that fell.”
Goberna clarifies that “this is the first partial collapse the building has suffered, but pieces had already fallen from the ceiling of the top floor, although until now they had been only superficial pieces.” An initiative to shore up the structure with wood failed because of the lack of fuel, which made it difficult to hire a truck to transport the beams.
From the street, the signs of prolonged deterioration are also evident. The art deco façade has windows without frames, open gaps and areas blackened by dampness. Built in 1936 and originally intended as a hotel, the building eventually became a huge collective residence, with numerous families spread among rooms and subdivided spaces.
The building is located in the Colón Popular Council, one of the most densely populated areas of Centro Habana. There, former mansions, hotels and guesthouses transformed into tenements house several generations of the same family or numerous households under a single roof. Overcrowding and structural deterioration are part of the daily landscape of a municipality where it takes only a few blocks of walking to find structures shored up, closed-off balconies and façades on the verge of falling apart.
Wednesday’s partial collapse occurred just days after a fatal collapse in the capital. On September 22, two people died when the porch of their home collapsed in Lawton, in the municipality of Diez de Octubre. Neighbors told 14ymedio at the time that the home’s residents had repeatedly warned of the danger posed by the building, without obtaining a solution from the authorities.
Partial collapses also often become a long ordeal for those who remain inside. Many families continue living in buildings declared uninhabitable or at risk of collapse because they have nowhere to move, and State shelters do not provide an immediate solution either. Each rainy season increases the risk in a city with a very old housing stock and decades of inadequate maintenance.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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