Hurricane Oscar barrels towards Cuba amid crippling power outage

The storm is forecast to reach eastern Cuba on Sunday, bringing heavy rains, while millions remain without electricity.

Hurricane Oscar is bearing down on Cuba as the island nation struggles to restore power following days of a massive nationwide blackout.

The expected arrival of the storm on Sunday, just days after the failure of Cuba’s largest power plant crippled the national grid, piles more pressure on a country already battling inflation as well as shortages of food, medicine, fuel and water.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Saturday 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 (85mph), Oscar was forecast to reach eastern Cuba on Sunday, where heavy rains are expected, according to the National Hurricane Center of the United States.

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 about 500 megawatts being generated, just a fraction of the country’s 3,300MW demand.

The power grid first crashed on Friday after the largest power plant shut down. The grid collapsed again on Saturday morning, state-run media reported.

By early evening, authorities reported some progress in restoring power, before announcing the grid had collapsed again.

Millions were still without power early on Sunday.

“God knows when the power will come back on,” said Rafael Carrillo, a 41-year-old mechanic, who had to walk almost 5km (3 miles) due to the lack of public transport amid the blackout, which followed weeks of power outages, lasting up to 20 hours a day in some provinces.

Prime Minister Manuel Marrero had earlier declared an “energy emergency”, suspending non-essential public services to prioritise electricity supply to homes.

Schools across the country are now closed until Monday.

Diaz-Canel blamed the situation on Cuba’s difficulties in acquiring fuel for its power plants, which he attributed to the tightening, under then-US President Donald Trump, of a six-decade-long US trade embargo.

In July 2021, blackouts prompted an unprecedented outpouring of public anger that spilled over to the streets, leaving one person dead and dozens injured.

In 2022, the island also suffered months of daily hours-long power outages, capped by a nationwide blackout caused by Hurricane Ian.

Source

:

Al Jazeera and news agencies