Fire at ETECSA's center in Las Tunas leaves the province incommunicado

HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 17 (ACN) A fire destroyed the main power plant of Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A. (ETECSA) in Las Tunas city on Thursday afternoon affecting all telecommunications services in that province.

ETECSA executives in that territory informed that preliminarily the damages caused by the fire interrupted all types of telecommunication services such as WIFI, radio base, Internet connection, as well as landlines.

We hope that the damage is only to what we are seeing, which is the feeder cables and fiber, and that no equipment has been affected", said Nelson Reyes, ETECSA's territorial director, to the 26 de Julio newspaper.

According to journalist István Ojeda, in communication with Cuban news agency, the company's technicians, together with Radiocuba experts and radio amateurs, are working tirelessly looking for alternative solutions to restore the service.

Maikel Martínez Figueredo, head of the provincial Fire Department, explained that the fire broke out in the basement of the building, where the company's cable tunnels are located and where there was a lot of combustible material, mainly plastic.

According to him, the fire has already been controlled and they are concentrating on cooling any incandescent focus that could, with the wind, reactivate the fire.

Through satellite telephones, the authorities of the territory and Etecsa are already in contact with the central government and are coordinating the reconstruction work.

Likewise, vehicles with loudspeakers have been deployed to keep the local population informed and experts are on site to determine the causes of the fire.

In the afternoon, ETECSA reported that all telecommunications services in the province of Las Tunas and partially affected services in the provinces of Camagüey, Granma and Guantánamo.

At this moment, the contingency measures foreseen are being adopted, according to the press release, and adds that it will continue to inform the population through the mass media and the usual information channels.