Cuba's old buildings were no match for Hurricane Irma | CNN

02:49 - Source: CNN

Buildings in danger of collapsing after Irma

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Of 10 deaths Cuba has blamed on Hurricane Irma, at least five were the result of building collapses

In Havana, over 300 miles from where Irma made landfall, at least 157 homes were destroyed

Havana, Cuba CNN —

A crowd of Cubans stood around the mangled bus, some offering assistance, others recording the tragic scene with their cell phones.

On the ground lay two prone women, their faces obscured by blood-matted hair, as seen in video of the incident that was obtained by CNN. The roof of the bus they were traveling in was ripped open, and windows were shattered as if a bomb had gone off.

“She’s already dead,” cried a passerby as a good Samaritan tried to take the pulse of one of the women.

All around the bus lay huge chunks of cement; pieces of a nearby building that had collapsed under the brunt of Hurricane Irma.

Long before Irma, derrumbes – as Cubans call building collapses – were a common event. Ornate colonial balconies, facades, sometimes even whole buildings, give way after decades of neglect and come crashing down with little to no warning.

Havana residents joke that their’s might be the only city in the world where it’s safer to walk in the middle of the road than on the sidewalks, in case the heavy stone edifices come crashing down.

Of the 10 deaths that Cuba has blamed on Hurricane Irma, at least five were the result of building collapses.

Irma hit Cuba as a monster Category 5 storm and laid waste to hundreds of buildings in the storm’s path. But Cuban officials worry that many more thousands of structures could be weakened and eventually fall.

01:59 - Source: CNN

Cuba recovers from Hurricane Irma

According to the state-run newspaper Granma, just in Havana, over 300 miles from the where Irma made landfall, at least 157 homes were destroyed and an additional 4,288 homes were weakened by Irma.

In the weeks to come, the damaged buildings could shift and suddenly disintegrate.

Litza Peñalver Sierra on Wednesday, amid the rubble of an apartment where two brothers died after Hurricane Irma caused their ceiling to cave in on them.

Patrick Oppmann/CNN

“The combination between the water and the sun create expansion and contraction and that creates structural problems in the building which you cannot predict,” said Cuban architect Yoandy Rizo Fiallo. “You don’t expect anything and then the building falls.”

Cuba has been in an economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union and suffered under more than five decades of US economic sanctions. The Cuban government maintains the exclusive right to import items to the island and at state-run hardware stores many building materials are overpriced, shoddy or simply nonexistent.

The lack of new construction has led Cubans to subdivide their homes, putting more strain on already creaking buildings.

Cuban President Raul Castro vowed the country would bounce back from the ravages inflicted by Irma, the strongest hurricane to hit the island in over 80 years.

“One principle remains immovable: the Revolution will leave no one unprotected,” Castro said in a statement addressed to the Cuban people. “And measures are already being adopted to ensure that no Cuban family is left to their fate.”