Hurricane Oscar stalking blackout-ravaged Cuba

The expected arrival of the hurricane comes just days after the failure of Cuba’s largest power plant crippled the national grid.

A motorcycle lights a Havana street under pouring rain during a nationwide blackout caused by a grid failure. Picture: AFP

A hurricane was bearing down on Cuba on Sunday as the nation’s authorities scrambled 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 crippled the national grid, piles more pressure on a country already battling sky-high inflation and shortages of food, medicine, fuel and water.

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

Packing winds of 140km/h, Oscar on Sunday was forecast to reach eastern Cuba, where heavy rains are expected, the US National Hurricane Centre said.

The presidency said in another post that progress had been made in restoring power, with 16 per cent of consumers receiving electricity and around 500 megawatts being generated. That was a fraction of the country’s 3300MW demand on Thursday, the day before the grid collapsed and the government declared an “energy emergency” after weeks of extended outages.

The power grid failed in a chain reaction on Friday due to the unexpected shutdown of the Antonio Guiteras power plant, the biggest of the island’s eight decrepit coal-fired power plants, according to Lazaro Guerra, head of electricity supply at the energy ministry. National utility UNE said it had managed to generate a minimal amount of electricity to get power plants restarted on Friday night, but by Saturday morning it was experiencing what official news outlet Cubadebate called “a new, total disconnection of the electrical grid”.

Most neighbourhoods in Havana remained dark on Saturday, except for hotels and hospitals with emergency generators and the very few private homes with that kind of backup.

“God knows when the power will come back on,” said Rafael Carrillo, a 41-year-old mechanic, who had to walk almost 5km due to lack of public transportation amid the blackout.

Yaima Vallares, a 28-year-old dancer, said “everything is very difficult … I am trying to remain calm because there is too much stress over everything in this country”.

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

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

Mr Diaz-Canel blamed difficulties in acquiring fuel for Cuba’s power plants, which he attributed to the tightening, during Donald Trump’s presidency, of a six-decade-long US trade embargo.

AFP