“When you publish the work, let me know so I can see it,” one of the red-clad rescuers tells me.

-Give me your phone, I tell him. “Tony Rescate”, that’s how I keep in touch and continue writing minute-by-minute information for Cubadebate. After a while, the lanky rescuer returns; his pants are full of dust from the rubble, his work-damaged boots are held together with adhesive tape, thick drops of sweat run down his forehead. He is exhausted, it shows on his face, but a half smile can still be seen on his lips.

It was Monday, May 9, more than 72 hours had passed since the explosion in the Saratoga and Tony had not lost his disposition. I don’t know if his youth, his personality or that genuine solidarity that cannot be faked, allowed him to distance himself, for an instant, from the fears and worries that hammered in his head.

“Take an African,” he tells me and Irene, the photojournalist. “We share everything we have here.” They call him from afar, the break is over, he makes a sign to Tito, the farmer who accompanied him a few seconds ago in a video call with his family and goes back into the ruins of the Saratoga hotel.

**

Juan Antonio Puentes Zayas is only 21 years old, he studies nursing, but he is also part of the Red Cross rescue and rescue group.

Seeing the movie “The Guardian”, something changed in him. He was so moved that it was his motivation to join the Red Cross. So, he began to avidly search for information.

When he found the secretary of the Cruz Roja de Playa he was able to begin the training that would turn his daily life into one of the scenes of that movie directed by Andrew Davis that had marked him so much.

“My first mission was when Hurricane Elsa. I started to acquire very useful skills for rescue work, especially in water rescue because I know how to dive.” Thus, Juan Antonio became the head of Operations and Relief of the Playa municipality.

Sea penetrations, insurance of social events and the 2021 cyclone had been the missions in which this young man had participated until May 6. Although Tony is a boy “forward”, as his grandparents would say, he confesses that “The Saratoga marked his life”.

When the Saratoga accident occurred, he says, he was teaching at the “Victoria de Girón” School of Medical Sciences and a colleague from the Red Cross, Orlando Luis, told him that an explosion had occurred in Havana. “My boss called me quickly to tell me what was going on.”

The next class shift of the nursing career, Tony would be absent, of course with the permission of his teacher. He was already on his way to the Saratoga dressed in his personal protective equipment. It was Friday, it was past 11 in the morning and he was already there.

“I have faced situations here that have hit me a lot; the first was the transfer of a victim. It was not the first time rescuing a deceased, but the way I felt it, it was very sad”.

And the fear? he asked him. He replies confidently: “I’ve been afraid, but the time comes when you don’t think about it, not because we think we’re invincible, but because of the importance of the work we have to accomplish.”

In the rubble of the Prado 609 building, Tony found the New Testament. He says he feels safer, more confident with the little book that he kept in his pocket. He carries it close to the heart.

Motivations? “There are many motivations to continue working. I cannot give up, for my family and for the families of the disappeared. In the hope of finding a living body. We work until we find them all.”

Your family? “They feel very proud, but they are also afraid. My mother hasn’t slept for the same days as me, because of her worry. My whole family is like this, my dad, my aunts, my friends, they write to me constantly ” he says with affection.

It is Thursday, May 12, six days have passed since the explosion and the rescue and salvage brigades find the body of the last person missing as a result of the accident at the Saratoga hotel.

It’s 4:49 p.m. and in Tony’s Whatsapp status the phrase “mission accomplished” can be seen.

The clock then strikes 9:42 p.m. when the other part of this young man’s personal mission is completed, to see “the person he loves most in this world”, his mother.