HAVANA – Tropical storm Oscar made landfall as a hurricane on the evening of Oct 20 in Cuba, where residents were preparing for more chaos and misery as the country grapples with a nearly nationwide power outage that is in its third day.
The arrival of Oscar, after the Oct 18 collapse of Cuba’s largest power plant crippled the whole national grid, piles pressure on a country already battling sky-high inflation and shortages of food, medicine, fuel and water.
Cuba’s government said power would be reinstated for the majority of the country by the evening of Oct 21, with President Miguel Diaz-Canel warning his government would not tolerate public disturbances during the outage.
Oscar was a Category 1 storm when it made landfall in eastern Cuba at 5.50pm local time on Oct 20, the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said, before it weakened to become a tropical storm.
As of 11pm local time on Oct 20, the storm was packing maximum sustained winds near 110kmh, and it was expected to continue moving across eastern Cuba into the next day.
In Baracoa, near the eastern tip of the county, waves up to 4m-high hit the seafront. Roofs and the walls of houses were damaged, and electricity poles and trees felled, state television reported.
President Diaz-Canel said on Oct 19 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”.
Energy and Mining Minister Vicente de la O Levy told reporters on Oct 20 that electricity would be restored for most Cubans by the night of Oct 21, adding that “the last customer may receive service by Tuesday”.
The power grid failed in a chain reaction on Oct 18 due to the unexpected shutdown of the biggest of the island’s eight decrepit coal-fired power plants, according to the head of electricity supply at the energy ministry, Mr Lazaro Guerra.
National electric utility UNE said it had managed to generate a minimal amount of electricity to get power plants restarted on the night of Oct 18, but by morning on Oct 19 it was experiencing what official news outlet Cubadebate called “a new, total disconnection of the electrical grid”.
Most neighbourhoods in Havana remain dark, except for hotels and hospitals with emergency generators and the very few private homes with backup systems.
After three days without power, “my fridge has defrosted, and I’m afraid that everything will be spoilt”, said Ms Adismary Cuza, a 56-year-old worker.
“Cubans are tired of so much,” added Mr Serguei Castillo, 68.
The blackout followed weeks of power outages, lasting up to 20 hours a day in some provinces.
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz on Oct 17 declared an “energy emergency”, suspending non-essential public services in order to prioritise electricity supply to homes.
And on Oct 20, President Diaz-Canel warned that the government would act “severely” against anyone who attempted to “disturb public order” during the blackout.
That statement came as witnesses reported residents in several neighbourhoods of Havana had taken to the streets on the night of Oct 20 to express their discontent.
There are “people in the street making noise with pots and pans, shouting ‘Let us have the power back on’”, a resident of the Santo Suarez neighbourhood told AFP.
Barricades of rubbish had also been erected in the Centro neighbourhood, AFP photographers saw.
President Diaz-Canel blamed the situation on Cuba’s difficulties in acquiring fuel for its power plants, which he attributed to the tightening, during Donald Trump’s presidency, of a six-decade-long US trade embargo.
Cuba is in the throes of its worst economic crisis since the collapse of its key ally, the Soviet Union, in the early 1990s – marked by soaring inflation and shortages of basic goods.
With no relief in sight, many Cubans have emigrated.
More than 700,000 entered the United States between January 2022 and August 2024, according to US officials.
While the authorities chiefly blame the US embargo, the island is also feeling the aftershocks of the Covid-19 pandemic battering its critical tourism sector, and of economic mismanagement.
To bolster its grid, Cuba has leased seven floating power plants from Turkish companies and also added many small diesel-powered generators.
In July 2021, blackouts sparked an unprecedented outpouring of public anger.
Thousands of Cubans took to the streets shouting “We are hungry” and “Freedom” in a rare challenge to the government.
One person was killed and dozens were injured in the protests. According to the Mexico-based human rights organization Justicia 11J, 600 people detained during the unrest remain in prison.
In 2022, the island also suffered months of daily, hours-long power outages, capped by a nationwide blackout caused by Hurricane Ian. AFP