- Cuba experiences an electrical outage
- Category 1 storm touches Cuba's coast
Cuba experiences an electrical outage
Hurricane Oscar reached Cuba on Sunday evening, as the country struggled for a third day with a near-countrywide power outage.
"Oscar struck Cuba before the country's largest power plant failed on Friday, disrupting the entire national grid and worsening the situation in Cuba, facing high inflation and shortages of food, medicine, fuel and water.
The Cuban government announced that electricity would be restored to most of the country by Monday evening. President Miguel Diaz-Canel warned that his government would not tolerate public unrest on the island without electricity.
Diaz-Canel, who was in military uniform, told a television news program that some people had tried to "disturb public order" and that those responsible would be "severely" punished. Witnesses reported that disgruntled residents in some areas of Havana took to the streets on Sunday evening. They made noise with pots and pans and demanded the "return of electricity," and in one area, barricades were erected with rubbish.
Category 1 storm touches Cuba's coast
The US National Hurricane Center reported that Oscar, a category 1 storm, landed on Cuba's east coast at 17.50 local time on Sunday (just before midnight Lithuanian time). Wind speeds reached 130 kilometers per hour. Waves up to four metres high hit the coast of Baracoa.
The power outage left most areas of Havana in darkness, except for hotels and hospitals, where emergency generators were running, and the very few private homes with backup systems. President Diaz-Canel blamed the situation on the difficulty of obtaining fuel for the power stations, especially when the US trade embargo on Cuba, which had been in place for six decades, was tightened under Donald Trump's presidency.
Cuba is experiencing its worst economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union, its most important ally, in the early 1990s. Seeing no relief, many Cubans have emigrated. According to US officials, between January 2022 and August 2024, more than 700,000 of them entered the United States.
In July 2021, power outages sparked unprecedented public anger. Thousands of Cubans took to the streets shouting "We are hungry" and "Freedom!". One person was killed and dozens injured in the protests. According to Justicia 11J, a Mexico-based human rights organization, 600 people detained during the unrest remain in prison.
Based on ELTA reports
