Cuba: Hurricane Oscar will hit an island without electricity

After a second night of almost total power outage, Cuba is preparing on Sunday for the imminent arrival of Hurricane Oscar, which is expected to hit the east of the island during the day.

Oscar is crossing the Caribbean in a west-southwest direction at a speed of about 19 km/h, with winds up to 130 km/h.

At 8 a.m., it was about 185 km from Guantanamo Bay, according to the latest report from the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).

The hurricane warning remains in effect for the southeastern Bahamas and the northern coast of the Cuban provinces of Holguin and Guantanamo.

Oscar will hit Cuba in the midst of an energy crisis, the island having spent its second night without power due to a breakdown that occurred on Friday in the main thermoelectric power station which led to the complete shutdown of the network.

Authorities in the east of the island are already working hard to protect the population and economic resources, given the imminence of Hurricane Oscarsupported the president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in a message published Saturday evening on X.

In another message on X, the Cuban presidency reported the beginning of progress in restoring the electricity system.

16% of consumers already have electricity and around 500 megawatts are being generated. The system will continue to increase its load in the coming hoursshe said.

For comparison, the country had consumed 3,300 megawatts on Thursday, the day before the total electricity blackout linked to the shutdown of the island’s main thermal power plant, located in Matanzas (west).

Situation d’energy emergency

On Thursday, the Cuban president announced that the island was in a situation ofenergy emergencygiven the difficulty of purchasing the fuel necessary to power its power stations, due to the strengthening of the embargo that Washington has imposed on the island since 1962.

By Saturday evening, most neighborhoods in Havana were in the dark, except for hotels and hospitals equipped with emergency generators and the few private homes that have this type of equipment.

The situation is very difficult, but I try to stay calm, because there is already too much stress in this countrytold theAFP Yaima Valladares, a 28-year-old dancer.

Isabel Rodriguez, 72, has difficulty sleeping like many of her compatriots, not being able to use fans when it was 27 degrees on Saturday evening, but with very high humidity, making it feel like 32 degrees.

People are a little upset, because the power has been out for a long time and God knows when it will be restoredunderlines Rafael Carrillo, a 41-year-old mechanic, who says he walked for almost five kilometers due to the lack of means of transport.

We spend four or five hours waiting for the guagua [bus] and when it passes, it’s full and doesn’t stophe said wearily.

Without electricity it is almost impossible to studyexplains a young man of 18 years old, on condition of anonymity. My phone battery is dead, we no longer have Internet, there is no connection and I can’t call my loved ones, because the landline at home is dead.

For three months, Cubans have been experiencing increasingly frequent power outages, with a national energy deficit of 30%. On Thursday, this deficit had reached 50%.

In recent weeks, in several provinces, outages have lasted more than twenty hours a day.

Eight dilapidated thermoelectric power plants

In Cuba, electricity is produced by eight dilapidated thermoelectric power plants, sometimes broken down or undergoing maintenance, as well as several floating power plants – which the government rents to Turkish companies – and generators.

Most of this infrastructure requires fuel to operate.

Power outages were one of the triggers for the historic protests of July 11, 2021.

In September 2022, the west of the island had already experienced a widespread outage after Hurricane Ian hit it. Completely restoring electricity took several days in the capital and several weeks across the island.