Hurricane Oscar landed Sunday night in eastern Cuba, where it faced a massive power outage for three days that authorities are trying to resolve.
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Oscar made landfall in eastern Cuba on Sunday with winds approaching 130 km/h, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
According to this source Oscar fell on the Cuban coast in the province of Guantánamo near the city of Baracoa in the east of the island at 17:50.
“Hurricane.” Oscar landed in the vicinity of Baracao,” the Cuban Meteorological Institute (Insmet) confirmed on its Facebook page. “Maisi Point weather station reports sustained winds of 80 km/h and gusts of 116 km/h at 17:25 local time (21:25 GMT).
Oscar has hit Cuba amid an energy crisis, with the island set to spend a third night without power after Friday’s failure of a major thermal plant in the country’s west caused a complete shutdown of the grid.
Authorities in the east of the island “are already working hard to protect the population and economic resources, given the impending hurricane Oscar», assured President Miguel Diaz-Canel in a message published on Saturday evening on X.
AFP
The government hopes to restore power on Monday evening.
“We can talk about the restoration of service to the majority of Cubans starting tomorrow Monday morning, afternoon or evening,” said Energy and Mining Minister Vicente de la O Levy.
Several hundred thousand Cubans were able to benefit from a few hours of electricity on Sunday before the entire electrical system was paralyzed again, according to the national electricity company (UNE).
AFP
“There has been a new disconnection from the National Electricity System (SEN). Restoration work will resume immediately,” the Ministry of Energy and Mines said on X late Sunday afternoon.
“Really Serious”
On Thursday, on the eve of a general blackout, the Cuban president announced that the island was in a situation of “energy emergency” and was facing difficulties in buying the fuel needed to power its power plants due to the strengthening of the embargo imposed by Washington. imposed on the island since 1962.
“It’s really serious, there’s no life here, this country can’t take it anymore,” complains Serguei Castillo, a 68-year-old bricklayer. “For two days I’ve only been eating kibble, pizza and other junk food,” he angrily told AFP.
AFP
“If your power goes out for four or five hours, that’s still fine, but here… it’s a lack of respect for people. I have no other way to describe what is happening to us,” says 51-year-old Isabel, who refuses to give her last name. “A country paralyzed for three days is too much!”
“destroyed”
Twenty-two-year-old student Luis Jiménez also ponders how Cubans will survive in the coming days and the future of his country.
“If the situation is not resolved quickly, I don’t know how we will survive,” he said. “That’s really not possible anymore. It’s a country in ruins, destroyed.”
For three months, Cubans suffered from increasingly frequent power outages with a national energy deficit of 30%. On Thursday, this deficit reached 50%.
AFP
Outages have lasted more than twenty hours a day in several provinces in recent weeks.
In Cuba, electricity is generated by eight dilapidated thermal power plants, sometimes broken down or under maintenance, as well as several floating power plants leased to Turkish companies and generators.
Power outages were one of the triggers for the historic July 11, 2021 protests.
In September 2022, the island has already experienced a obscuration widespread after the passage of the hurricane Ian which hit the west of the island. It took several days in the capital and several weeks across the island to fully restore electricity.