Hotel blast deaths hit 27, rescuers told to ‘push on’

HAVANA: Rescuers combed through what remained of a luxury Havana hotel on Saturday, as the death toll after a powerful blast due to a suspected gas leak climbed to 27, authorities said.

No survivors were found in the upper floors of the prestigious Saratoga Hotel, and rescuers said they were now concentrating their efforts on the jumbled debris filling the two-level basement of the neoclassical building.

Authorities reported on Saturday that 37 people had been hospitalised, down from an earlier number of 46.

There was meanwhile some confusion after a Red Cross official gave a death toll of 32, but the higher number was later reported to be “an error”.

The hotel had been closed for business during renovation work, and many victims of Friday’s explosion were either construction workers or hotel employees preparing for its reopening.

But a 29-year-old Spanish tourist, who had been walking nearby, died in the blast.

So far, 11 hotel employees have been identified among the dead, said Roberto Enriquez Calzadilla, a spokesman for the state-run tourism group Gaviota, which operates the hotel.

He said the explosion happened while a gas tank was being refilled by a tanker truck.

Officials said the dead included four children and adolescents. More than a dozen of those hospitalised were listed in critical or serious condition.

With the search now turning towards the building’s basement levels — a cry for help was heard from there on Friday afternoon — tons of smoking debris have complicated the task.

“My daughter works in the Saratoga — she’s been there [under the rubble] since ... yesterday morning, and in all this time I still don’t know anything,” an anguished Yaumara Cobas told journalists.

She said that she had checked with a hospital and the morgue with no results.

“We’ve got to push on,” said longtime Politburo member Ramiro Valdes, a veteran of the Cuban revolution.

“Some of our comrades could still be down there — alive.”