HAVANA — Relatives of the missing in Cuba’s capital desperately searched Saturday for victims of an explosion at one of Havana’s most luxurious hotels that killed at least 27 people.
Julio Guerra Izquierdo, chief of hospital services at the Ministry of Health, raised the death toll to 27 with 81 people injured.
Representatives of Grupo de Turismo Gaviota SA, which owns the hotel, said during a news conference Saturday that 51 workers had been inside the hotel at the time, as well as two people working on renovations.
Search and rescue teams worked through the night and into Saturday, using ladders to descend through the rubble and twisted metal into the hotel’s basement as heavy machinery gingerly moved away piles of the building’s façade to allow access.
At least one survivor was found early Saturday in the shattered ruins, and rescuers using search dogs clambered over huge chunks of concrete looking for more.
“She’s not at the morgue, she’s not in the hospital.” The mother said she had gone everywhere seeking answers from authorities, but coming up empty.
Peña said the presence of people had been detected on the first floor and in the basement and four teams of search dogs and handlers were working.
“I thought it was a bomb,” said Guillermo Madan, a 73-year-old retiree, who lives just meters from the building, but was not injured.
The hotel was renovated in 2005 as part of the Cuban government’s revival of Old Havana and is owned by the Cuban military’s tourism business arm, Grupo de Turismo Gaviota SA.