HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s widespread power outages have extended into their fourth day as Hurricane Oscar barreled past the island. East Coast With wind and heavy rain.
In Santo Suárez, part of a densely populated area in southwest Havana, people took to the streets Sunday night to protest, banging pots and pans. The protestors blocked the street by littering, claiming that they also did not have water.
Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy told a press conference that he hopes to restore power by Monday or Tuesday morning.
A resident walks his bicycle during a blackout following the failure of a major power plant in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
But Oscar, which made landfall on the east coast Sunday evening, will bring “additional difficulty” to Cuba’s recovery because it will hit a “strong (electricity) producing region,” he said. Major Cuban power plants such as Felton in Holguin and Rende in Santiago de Cuba are located in the region.
Oscar later weakened to a tropical storm but its effects were forecast to linger on the island until Monday.
Power was restored in the Cuban capital of 2 million people in some neighborhoods, but much of Havana remained in the dark. The Effect of electrical resistance Services such as water supply also depend on electricity to run pumps, beyond lighting.
Before food went bad in refrigerators, people resorted to cooking on the streets with improvised wood stoves.
Through tears, Ylenis de la Caridad Napoles, the mother of a 7-year-old girl, says she is reaching a point of “desperation.”
The failure of the Antonio Guiteras plant on Friday caused the collapse of the island’s entire system, the latest in a series of problems with energy supply in a country where electricity is cut off and rotates in different regions. day The status of Cuba’s other power plants is unclear.
People queued for hours on Sunday to buy bread at the few bakeries that could reopen.
Some Cubans, like Rosa Rodriguez, have been without power for four days.
“We have millions of problems and none of them have been solved,” Rodriguez said. “We have to come get the bread because the local bakery is closed and they bring it from somewhere else.”
The blackout was considered Cuba’s worst since Hurricane Ian hit the island as a Category 3 storm in 2022 and damaged electrical installations. It took the government several days to fix them. This year, some homes have spent up to eight hours a day without power.
Cuba’s government said Saturday that electricity had been partially restored. But the 500 megawatts of power in the island’s electricity infrastructure, far short of the usual 3 gigawatts it needs, soon dwindled to 370 megawatts.
Even in a country that is used to being partially disabled Deep economic crisisFriday’s decline was huge.
A resident looks at his cellphone on the street during a blackout following a major power plant outage in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinoza)
The Cuban government has announced emergency measures to reduce electricity demand, including suspending school and university classes, closing some state-owned workplaces and canceling essential services.
Local officials said the outage was due to increased demand for small and medium enterprises and residential air conditioners. Later, power outages worsened as old thermoelectric plants, which were not properly maintained, broke down and lacked fuel to run some facilities.
Cuba’s energy minister said on Saturday that the country’s grid would be better if there were not two more partial blackouts as authorities tried to reconnect. De La O’Levy also said that countries including Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Russia have offered to help.
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