Cuba: Solidarity on the Net After Plane Crash  · Global Voices
Elaine Diaz

Cuban plane crashes with 68 on board. Courtesy of Escambray.
At dusk Thursday November 4 the digital website of  the Escambray [es] newspaper confirmed a plane had crashed near the town of  Guasimal, located some 15 kilometers from Sancti Spiritus city, in central Cuba. Sixty-eight people died. Minutes later, Cubans using twitter.com started exchanging  information on the deadly accident.
Journalist  @humbct66 tweeted the  first versions of the event, as well as the arrival of ambulances and  paramedics to look for survivors. When they ruled out that possibility,  messages of support for the victims’ relatives were spread throughout the web.
La solidaridad se hace presente. Mensajes de personalidades y personas comunes se conjugan en la red por #accidente en #SanctiSpíritus
From the hashtag #Cuba, the first encouraging messages from Cubans living abroad started arriving.  @marianeli54 wrote:
Mis pensamientos están con mi pueblo querido, que hoy llora por el trágico accidente del vuelo ATR-72.
The spaces devoted to comments in the Cuban websites have turned into a source of firsthand details of the event. From Cubadebate [es], Osmel says he was at the site which he describes as “terrifying” the scenes.  Meanwhile, Adrián [es], in the Juventud Rebelde [es] website asks for “a national mourning for the  tragedy”.