Cuba struggles to recover from nationwide blackout, then storm that kills 7

On Tuesday, Havana residents collected subsidized food and said the country faced an intense period of recovery.

“There are lines everywhere you go,” said resident Carlos Lopez. “You get to a place, and there are obstacles and obstacles.”

Tropical Storm Oscar broke up as it headed toward the Bahamas after making landfall in Cuba as a Category 1 hurricane. Remnants were expected to drop up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) of rain in the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Modesto Hernandez, who lives in central Havana, said Tuesday that he and others “don’t know anything about what’s going on.”

“These problems need to be solved now,” he said. “We’re in bad shape.”

Diaz-Canel warned on national television on Sunday that “we will not allow any vandalism or allow anyone to disturb the peace of the people.”

The prolonged nationwide power outage that followed Thursday night’s massive outage was part of a nationwide energy crisis that led to Cuba’s biggest protests in nearly 30 years in July 2021. These were followed by smaller local protests in October 2022 and March 2024.

All of them are part of a deep economic crisis that has caused more than half a million Cubans to flee to the United States and thousands more to Europe.

The Cuban government and its allies blame the 62-year-old United States trade embargo on the island for its economic woes, but White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre said Monday that “the Cuban government’s long-term mismanagement of economic and resource policies certainly , increased the hardships of the people in Cuba.”

Energy remains relatively cheap but increasingly unaffordable. The Cuban government said on state television Monday night that it was generating 1,300 megawatts when peak demand could reach 3 gigawatts. As of midday Monday, authorities said about 80 percent of Havana was without power, but people were still fearful. Classes remained closed until at least Thursday.

Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said Oscar would bring “additional inconvenience” to Cuba’s recovery, as it would affect key Cuban power plants such as Felton in the city of Holguín and Renté in Santiago de Cuba.

Many of Havana’s 2 million residents began cooking with makeshift wood stoves in the streets before their food spoiled in refrigerators. People stood in lines to buy discounted food, and few gas stations were open.

The accident at the Antonio Guiteras plant on Friday was the latest problem with power distribution in a country where power has been limited and distributed to different regions at different times.

The blackout was considered Cuba’s worst since Hurricane Ian hit the island as a Category 3 storm in 2022 and damaged power plants. It took the government days to fix them.

Initially, the local authorities said that the failure occurred due to increased demand from small and medium-sized companies and household air conditioners. Later, the blackout worsened due to the breakdown of old thermal power plants that were not properly maintained, and the lack of fuel for the operation of some facilities.