The mother of the young Leo Alejandro Doval Pérez de Prado, one of the recruits who died during the fire at the Matanzas Supertanker Base, affirmed that one year after the incident and although she tries not to think about it, “there are images that do not go away “from his head.
In an interview granted to the official newspaper from Matanzas Giron, Vivianne Perez De Prado Lopez she explains her grieving process, scenes prior to her son’s death that “alerted” her that something could endanger the young man’s life, and “images that won’t go away from my head.”
“For example, when I’m in a bus and I pass by the stretch of road in front of the university, where the bay can be seen so clean with the tanks behind, I can’t help but imagine Leo’s expression when he passed right by that part and feel that was approaching those very violent flames,” he explained.
He comments that during this year he has imagined the final minutes of the 19-year-old several times and finally decided “to think no more about the moment of the explosion.”
“I prefer to stay with the version that Jorge González, forensic doctor, explained to us, in which he told us that the high temperatures and the intensity of a detonation like that causes immediate death, or at least, his total loss of consciousness, for which reason the person dies with no room to feel any kind of pain,” he said.
He said that “I preferred to appropriate that version because before I thought a lot… —and I still do— at that moment, in those seconds. Nobody deserves a death like this, Leo less. To this day I have not known whether he was riding in the chariot or not, what he was specifically doing before he died.”
She stresses that she collected dozens of images from the photographers who covered the events: “I have them all. All my phone is that. To see, detect a detail that someone did not see,” says the woman, who has shared her pain on several occasions in emotional posts on Facebook.
The testimony of the mother, who has kept “all his little things” in a part of her son’s room, speaks of the devastation of several families who lost their loved ones during the fire at the Matanzas Supertanker Base, started when lightning struck a tank with thousands of gallons of fuel on the afternoon of August 5, 2022.
Especially, of those who still question why the Cuban regime sent to the front line of the disaster, one of the worst fires reported on the island, young recruits who were doing their mandatory Military Service with no experience in this type of fire.
Pérez de Prado tells about that day to Giron:
“The afternoon the lightning struck I had a very strong feeling. The left side of my body stood on end. Of course, the first thing I did was call Leo, but he was fine. From a rooftop they watched and filmed with cell phones the cloud of smoke already rising into the air.
That day we talked until about 10 at night. I repeatedly told him to take care of himself and he, as always, tried to calm me down: “Go to sleep early, we’re not going anywhere.”
From then on I never spoke to him again. Shortly after, I went to bed and didn’t open my eyes until Saturday, at seven in the morning, when a call from Leo’s father-in-law woke me up, asking me what I knew about the boy.
—Okay, we talked a lot last night. Why the question?
—At dawn he went to the fire.
I got up, got dressed and went out into the street. I didn’t know where to go. I got on a motorcycle that I don’t even remember the color of, nor have I ever seen the driver’s face again. I don’t know if he was a boatman, if I paid him or not. I do not remember anything.
In the midst of so much nerve I spoke with a friend and he explained that he had seen a strange movement in the Parque de la Libertad, some tents where they were treating the wounded, that he should pass by. Upon arrival I was quickly intercepted by a psychologist who, seeing how she was doing, calmed me down a bit.
From there I went looking for the hospitals. First I arrived at the Military, where still without going in, a woman approached me, familiar just like me, and she asked me who I was looking for there. So I explained to him that my son was serving at the airport command and at dawn he had moved to the Industrial Zone.
—Oh daughter, he told me, that truck entered and no one was saved.
I said yes in Leo’s father-in-law’s car, already on the way to the Faustino hospital. They told me that I screamed, that I did I don’t know how many other things; but I don’t really know what happened. When we got to the hospital we went in like crazy —Leo’s girlfriend, the mother-in-law and I—, going through the wards and looking at the face of each bedridden patient, to see if we recognized Leo. We didn’t speak to each other, but inside we hoped to recognize him.
Tay, the director of Faustino, and Laurita, a psychologist, immediately went to meet us and helped us a lot. They were truly unconditional and stayed with us until we moved to the Velasco Hotel, where the relatives of the disappeared persons were already meeting.
We also arrived there with hope: the hope of finding out that Leo had had time to run. But then we found out no.”
In the fire, 17 people died, including four recruits between the ages of 19 and 24: Leo Alejandro Doval Pérez de Prado (19 years old), Fabián Naranjo Núñez (20 years old), Michel Rodríguez Román and Adriano Rodríguez Gutiérrez.
Leo, Vivianne’s son, was the youngest victim of the accident.
