Hurricane set to hit Cuba amid nationwide power outage

HAVANA – A hurricane bore down on Cuba on Sunday as authorities in the island nation raced to restore power following a massive nationwide outage.

The expected arrival of Hurricane Oscar, just days after the failure of Cuba’s largest power plant paralyzed the national grid, is increasing pressure on a country already grappling with skyrocketing inflation and food shortages, medicine, fuel and water.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel said in a social media post on Saturday that authorities in the east of the island were “working hard to protect the population and economic resources, given the imminent arrival of the hurricane Oscar”.

With winds gusting to 140 kilometers per hour, Oscar is expected to reach eastern Cuba on Sunday, where heavy rain is expected, according to the US National Hurricane Center.

The Cuban presidency said in another social media post that progress had been made in restoring power, with 16 percent of consumers receiving electricity and around 500 megawatts being generated.

That was a fraction of the country’s 3,300 megawatts of demand on Thursday, the day before the grid collapsed and the government declared an “energy emergency” after weeks of prolonged outages.

The power grid failed Friday in a chain reaction due to the unexpected shutdown of the Antonio Guiteras power plant, the largest of the island’s eight decrepit coal-fired power plants, according to the official of electricity supply to the Ministry of Energy, Lazaro Guerra.

National electricity company UNE said it had managed to produce a minimum amount of electricity to allow power plants to restart on Friday evening, but on Saturday morning it was experiencing what the official Cubadebate newspaper called “a new disconnection total electricity network.

Most neighborhoods in Havana remained in the dark on Saturday, except for hotels and hospitals equipped with backup generators and the very few private homes with this type of backup system in the economically struggling country.

“God knows when the power will come back,” said Rafael Carrillo, a 41-year-old mechanic, who had to walk nearly five kilometers due to the lack of public transportation due to the power outage.

Yaima Vallares, a 28-year-old dancer, told AFP that “everything is very difficult. For almost a day we have had this blackout which is making our lives so hard.”

“I try to stay calm because there is too much stress for everything in this country,” she said.

The outage follows weeks of power outages, lasting up to 20 hours a day in some provinces.

Prime Minister Manuel Marrero declared an “energy emergency” on Thursday, suspending non-essential public services to prioritize the supply of electricity to homes.

Schools across the country are now closed until Monday.

“It’s crazy,” Eloy Fon, an 80-year-old retiree living in central Havana, told AFP on Friday.

“This shows the fragility of our electricity system… We have no reserves, there is nothing to support the country, we live from day to day.”

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