14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 13 September 2022 — Two people were seriously injured in the fire at a house in Luyanó, in the Havana municipality of Diez de Octubre, in the early hours of Tuesday.
According to the neighbors, who spoke to this newspaper, the fire began at four in the morning when an electric motorbike that was charging caught fire. The flames reached a second motorbike and several fuel cans that the family had stored, which quickly reduced the interior of the house to ashes. “Even the floor rose,” a neighbor said.
Inside the building, located on Arango Street, between Manuel Pruna and Rosa Enríquez, were the owner, Fidel González, well known in the neighborhood for working at a nearby carpentry shop, his three children, Denny (15 years old), David and Daniel (twins) and his wife, a Cuban-American visiting Havana.
The accident occurred when Daniel, who works as a taxi driver, was taking a bath after getting home from working. “The boy felt an explosion, and when he went outside, one of the motorbikes was on fire,” says another neighbor. “He alerted everyone in the house who were inside their air-conditioned rooms.”
One of the family’s two dogs, Floppy, stayed in the house and had to be rescued, with injuries, by a firefighter.
Daniel himself was the one who ended up with serious burns. Both he and his wife, who inhaled too much carbon dioxide, were admitted to the Miguel Enríquez hospital, known as La Benéfica.
Relatives of the family sent a petition via Facebook to all acquaintances to collect aid, because, they regret, they lost “everything: TV, washing machine, refrigerator, kitchen.”
Daniel González, according to the neighbors, was planning to go to the United States by the “route of the volcanoes” (Nicaragua).
Fires due to the explosions of electric motorbikes are frequent in Cuba. One of the latest reported occurred last June in the municipality of Cerro, also in Havana, and destroyed 12 motorbikes and two cars.
Last year, a 60-year-old woman and one grandchild, age 7, were killed in a fire caused by the explosion of a motorbike in Sancti Spíritus, and, months later, another 19-year-old girl died in a similar accident in the city of Matanzas.
Also, fuel storage, which in the case of Luyanó aggravated the accident, is also common on the Island. In many cases, it’s used for the operation of electric generators, some families’ alternative to the everyday blackouts.
In this case, the González family was storing it for the taxi operated by Daniel, in view of the increasingly frequent shortage of fuel in the gas stations.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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