Hurricane Oscar makes landfall in Cuba, plunged into darkness

(Keystone-ATS) Hurricane Oscar made landfall on Sunday in eastern Cuba, with winds approaching 130 km/h, while the island has suffered an almost total power outage since Friday. The storm hit Guantanamo province, near the city of Baracoa.

“Hurricane Oscar made landfall near Baracao,” the Cuban Meteorological Institute (INSMET) said on its Facebook page. “The Pointe Maisi weather station reports sustained winds of 80 km/h and a gust of 116 km/h at 5:25 p.m.” local time (11:25 p.m. in Switzerland).

Oscar hits Cuba in the midst of an energy crisis as the island prepares to spend a third night without power due to an outage on Friday at the main thermoelectric plant in the west of the country that brought the grid to a complete halt .

The authorities in the east of the island “are already working hard to protect the population and economic resources, given the imminence of Hurricane Oscar,” assured President Miguel Diaz-Canel in a message published Saturday evening on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

The government hopes to restore electricity Monday evening. “We can talk about the fact that between tomorrow Monday morning, afternoon or evening”, the service will be restored for the majority of Cubans, indicated the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy.

Brief return of electricity

A few hundred thousand Cubans were able to benefit from a few hours of electricity on Sunday, before the entire electrical system was paralyzed again, according to the national electricity company (UNE).

“A new disconnection of the national electricity system (SEN) has occurred. Restoration work will resume immediately,” the Ministry of Energy and Mines indicated on X late Sunday afternoon.

Thursday, on the eve of the general blackout, the Cuban president announced that the island was in a situation of “energy emergency” faced with difficulties in 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.

For three months, Cubans have suffered from power cuts that have become more and more frequent, 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.

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

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