CNN —
Millions of Cubans remained without power for a third straight day on Sunday as new attempts to restore electricity failed overnight.
The Cuban Electricity Union said power had been restored to about 16% of the country late Saturday when the aging power grid was again overloaded. Officials have not provided updates on when services will resume.
This is the third complete collapse of Cuba’s energy grid since Friday, leaving most people in the country of 10 million without access to electricity.
Forecasters said the arrival of Hurricane Oscar in eastern Cuba is expected to bring strong winds and waves, further complicating recovery efforts.
Hurricane Oscar made its first landfall on Inagua Island in the Bahamas, with estimated maximum sustained winds of 80 mph, according to an update from the National Hurricane Center as of 5 a.m. EDT Sunday.
It is expected to reach the northeast coast of Cuba as a hurricane late this afternoon. “Although expected to weaken after landfall, Oscar could still become a tropical storm when it moves north over Cuba late Monday and crosses the central Bahamas on Tuesday,” the NHC said.
Cuba’s first island-wide power outage occurred on Friday, causing one of the country’s main power plants to fail, the Energy Ministry said.
The country suffered a second nationwide power outage on Saturday morning, hours after authorities said power was slowly being restored.
A power outage threatens to plunge the communist country into an even more serious crisis. Providing water and keeping food fresh both rely on reliable electricity.
Some people started flooding their WhatsApp chats with updates on which areas had power, others who had temporary power, or the refrigerators of those lucky enough to have generators. Some arranged for medicines to be stored in the
In Havana, residents waited for hours to buy a few loaves of bread at one of the few bakeries in the capital. When the bread ran out, several people angrily claimed they had been skipped in line.
Many wondered aloud where Cuba’s traditional allies such as Venezuela, Russia and Mexico were located. Previously, they were supplying the island with much-needed barrels of oil to keep the lights on.
Meanwhile, tourists could still be seen circling Havana’s main streets in classic 1950s cars, even as many hotel generators ran out of fuel.
One foreign visitor told CNN that Havana’s José Martí International Airport was operating in the dark, with only emergency power, the printers used to issue tickets were not working, and there were no windows inside the terminal. There was also no air conditioning, he added.
Reuters reporters witnessed two small protests overnight into Sunday, while videos of protests elsewhere in the capital were also released.
Cuban officials blame the energy crisis on a confluence of events, from tightening economic sanctions by the United States to the disruption caused by recent hurricanes and the depletion of the island’s infrastructure.
Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz said in a televised address Thursday delayed by technical issues that much of the country’s limited production had been halted to avoid leaving the country completely without power. Ta.
“We have paralyzed economic activity to provide electricity to our people,” he said.
The country’s Health Minister José Ángel Portal Miranda told broadcaster X on Friday that the country’s medical facilities are running on generators and medical workers continue to provide essential services.
CNN’s Mia Alberti and Jean Norman and CNN Spanish’s Veronica Calderon and Gerardo Lemos contributed to this report.
