Hurricane Oscar makes landfall in Cuba amid crippling power outage
Oscar is expected to bring heavy rains and storm surge to eastern Cuba, where millions remain without electricity.
Hurricane Oscar has made landfall on the northeastern coast of Cuba as the island nation struggles to restore power following a massive nationwide blackout.
In its latest update, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in the United States said the storm made landfall on Sunday evening near the city of Baracoa, in the province of Guantanamo, with maximum sustained winds of about 130km/h (80mph).
The Cuban meteorological survey earlier had warned of “an extremely dangerous situation” in the east of the country, which has largely been without electricity or communication ahead of Oscar’s arrival.
The storm hit just days after the failure of Cuba’s largest power plant crippled the national grid, piling more pressure on a nation already battling shortages of food, medicine, fuel and water.
The grid collapsed again on Sunday – the fourth such failure in 48 hours – after authorities had said they were making headway in restoring power.
On Saturday, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said in a post on social media that officials in the east of the island were “working hard to protect the people and economic resources, given the imminent arrival of Hurricane Oscar”.
The power grid first crashed on Friday after the power plant shut down, and it collapsed again on Saturday morning, state-run media reported.
By early evening on Saturday, authorities reported some progress in restoring power, before announcing the grid had collapsed again.
Millions of people were still without power on Sunday.
“God knows when the power will come back on,” said Rafael Carrillo, a 41-year-old mechanic, who had to walk almost 5km (3 miles) due to the lack of public transport amid the blackout, which followed weeks of power outages, lasting up to 20 hours a day in some provinces.
Anabel Gonzalez, of old Havana, a neighbourhood popular with tourists, said she was growing desperate after three days without power.
“My cell phone is dead and look at my refrigerator. The little that I had has all gone to waste,” she said, pointing to bare shelves in her two-room home.
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz had earlier declared an “energy emergency”, suspending non-essential public services to prioritise electricity supply to homes.
Schools across the country are now closed through Wednesday, and officials said only essential workers should report to work on Monday.
Diaz-Canel blamed the situation on Cuba’s difficulties in acquiring fuel for its power plants, which he attributed to the tightening of a six-decade-long US trade embargo.
In July 2021, blackouts prompted an unprecedented outpouring of public anger that spilled over to the streets, leaving one person dead and dozens injured.
In 2022, the island also suffered months of daily hours-long power outages, capped by a nationwide blackout caused by Hurricane Ian.
Source
:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
