Following a widespread blackout that sparked a few protests and a firm official warning that any disturbance would be punished, Cuba’s capital was partially lit.
At least seven people were killed by floods in a small Cuban village on Tuesday after Oscar, a tropical storm with strong winds and a lot of rain, moved across the island’s eastern coast.
On state television, President Miguel Díaz-Canel stated that officials had not yet accessed certain flooded areas and that rescue and recovery efforts were still ongoing in the municipality of San Antonio del Sur.
He confirmed another death in the Guantanamo province’s little hamlet of Imias on Tuesday.
Havana residents said the nation was going through a rigorous recovery phase as they gathered subsidized food on Tuesday.
Everywhere you go, there are queues, according to Carlos López, a city dweller. “Obstacles abound when you reach a destination.”
Tropical Storm Oscar made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane in Cuba and then broke apart as it moved into the Bahamas.
The southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands were predicted to get up to 4 inches (10 cm) of rain from the remnants.
Central Havana resident Modest o Hernández stated on Tuesday that he and other people “don’t know anything about what is going on.”
“These issues must be resolved immediately,” he declared. “We are in poor condition.”
On Sunday, Díaz-Canel issued a warning on national television, saying, “We will not tolerate any vandalism or allow anyone to disturb people’s tranquility.”
In July 2021, Cuba saw the biggest protests in nearly 30 years due to statewide electricity issues, including the protracted nationwide blackout that followed a huge outage on Thursday night.
Smaller local demonstrations in October 2022 and March 2024 followed.
All are a part of a severe economic crisis that has caused thousands of Cubans to flee to Europe and over half a million to flee to the United States.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated on Monday that the Cuban government’s “long-term mismanagement of its economic policy and resources has certainly increased the hardship of people in Cuba.” The Cuban government and its allies attribute the island’s economic woes to the United States’ 62-year-old trade embargo.
Although power is becoming more scarce, it is still reasonably priced. On Monday night, the Cuban government claimed on state television that it was producing 1300 megawatts, despite the fact that peak demand might reach 3 gigawatts.
About 80% of Havana had sporadic power by Monday afternoon, according to authorities, but citizens were still afraid. Classes didn’t start until at least Thursday.
Oscar would cause “an additional inconvenience” to Cuba’s recovery, according to Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy, because it would impact important Cuban power facilities like Renté in Santiago de Cuba and Felton in the city of Holguín.
Before their food in refrigerators went bad, many of Havana’s 2 million residents had to cook on makeshift wood burners on the streets. Few gas stations were open, and people waited in line to purchase subsidized food.
In a nation where electricity has been limited and distributed among various regions at different times, the Antonio Guiteras plant failure on Friday was the most recent issue with energy distribution.
The outage was regarded as the biggest to affect Cuba since Hurricane Ian, a Category 3 storm that devastated electricity installations in 2022, struck the country. The administration took days to fix them.
At first, local officials said that the outage was caused by a rise in demand from residential air conditioners and small and medium-sized businesses.
Later, the scarcity of fuel to run some facilities and malfunctions in outdated thermoelectric plants that had not been properly maintained caused the blackout to worsen.
