During last night and until the early hours of this morning, a working commission sent by the country’s top leadership exchanged with authorities and residents, and verified some of the damage caused by the strong earthquakes on Sunday in several municipalities in the province of Granma.
Eduardo Martínez Díaz, Deputy Prime Minister; Jorge Luis Broche Lorenzo, Member of the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC); and Major General Ramón Pardo Guerra, Chief of the National General Staff of Civil Defence, headed the delegation that went to Campechuela, Media Luna and Pilón.
In the latter locality, the closest to the epicentre, they took an interest in the conditions of the field hospital created in areas of the Félix Lugones Ramírez health institution, severely affected by the earthquakes, according to journalist Jorge Luis Ríos, of the provincial telecentre Crisol de la Nacionalidad Cubana.
Accompanied by the main leaders of the PCC and the government in the territory, they learned that the aforementioned health centre has the medicines and medical, technical and nursing staff necessary for the comprehensive care of patients.
They also received information about the community work of groups of health workers who go around the neighbourhoods to check on the state of the population, and exchanged with neighbours in the area known as «the buildings», which, at that time, remained in open places as a preventive measure in case of possible aftershocks.
According to the report, from dawn on Monday, specialists in various fields will begin a more detailed assessment of the damage.
Preliminary data indicate severe damage to the housing fund and state infrastructure in various sectors, including education, public health, television and heritage, while there are also reports of landslides in mountainous areas.
So far, three total landslides and more than 200 partial damage have been identified in Pilón, while no deaths have been reported and two people have been injured: a five-year-old girl and a 48-year-old woman.
The damage includes damage to main lines and transformers, fallen poles and other damage to the electricity system, which resulted in the loss of service to more than 12,000 customers, mostly in Pilón, Bartolomé Masó and Yara.
