A fire broke out this Wednesday night in Circumscription 5 of the municipality of Jovellanos, in Matanzas, destroying several tobacco curing houses and causing considerable losses.
The incident occurred shortly after 10:00 p.m. in the San Carlos People’s Council, of the aforementioned territory, in the houses dedicated to the treatment of the leaf belonging to the Matanzas Tobacco Collection and Processing Company (EABTM), according to a note published by the official Cubadebate website.
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The report adds that the rapid action of the Fire Department of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) prevented the spread to other houses of the same type, as well as to areas of the surrounding community.
Rolando Tirse Fernández, Fire Chief of Command 7, explained that together with the firefighters who came from the nearby municipalities of Perico and Pedro Betancourt, the main actions were focused on cooling down the adjoining curing houses and mitigating those that already were on fire in order to avoid a possible spread of the flames.
As a preliminary balance of the incident, three curing houses were totally affected, which represents the loss of just over 11,300 cujes of recently harvested tobacco and other resources and inputs still to be quantified, according to information provided by Humberto Suárez Sotolongo, director of the EABTM.
It was also revealed that as a result of the flames, nearly a hundred homes were left without electricity service, affected by overheating and the splitting of several power lines.
The information specifies that specialized forces are working to clarify what started the fire.
In recent weeks several fires have been in the news in Cuba, most of them forest fires, the main cause of which is the intense drought that is currently affecting the island.
One of the most complex occurred in the area of Pinares de Mayarí, in the province of Holguín, which consumed more than 5,000 hectares of forest during the first days of March, causing damage that, according to specialists, will not be fully recovered during the next decade.
Another incident of this type occurred around the same time in a mountainous area of Pinar del Río, in areas close to La Güira National Park.
According to estimates released after its extinction, the flames affected some 270 hectares of broadleaf or humid tropical forests.
Data from the Territorial Forest Ranger Corps indicate that so far this year 75 forest fires of various magnitudes have occurred in Pinar del Río, and that 500 hectares have been affected by these events.
