{"id":9021,"date":"2024-10-21T14:16:18","date_gmt":"2024-10-21T18:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9021"},"modified":"2024-10-21T14:16:18","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T18:16:18","slug":"cubans-struggle-with-an-extended-power-outage-and-a-new-tropical-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9021","title":{"rendered":"Cubans Struggle with an Extended Power Outage and a New Tropical Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Cuba\u2019s widespread blackouts stretched into their fourth day as Hurricane Oscar crossed the island\u2019s eastern coast<\/a><\/span> with winds and heavy rain.<\/p>\n

In Santo Su\u00e1rez, part of a populous neighborhood in southwestern Havana, people went into the streets banging pots and pans in protest Sunday night. The protesters, who say they have no water either, blocked the street with garbage.<\/p>\n

Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said in a news conference he hopes the electricity grid will be restored on Monday or Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n

But he said that Oscar, which made landfall on the eastern coast Sunday evening, will bring \u201can additional inconvenience\u201d to Cuba\u2019s recovery since it will touch a \u201cregion of strong (electricity) generation.\u201d Key Cuban power plants, such as Felton in the city of Holgu\u00edn, and Rent\u00e9 in Santiago de Cuba, are located in the area.<\/p>\n

Oscar later weakened to a tropical storm but its effects were forecast to linger in the island through Monday.<\/p>\n

Some neighborhoods had electricity restored in Cuba\u2019s capital, where 2 million people live, but most of Havana remained dark. The impact of the blackout<\/a><\/span> goes beyond lighting, as services like water supply also depend on electricity to run pumps.<\/p>\n

A resident looks at his cell phone on the street during a blackout following the failure of a major power plant in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

People resorted to cooking with improvised wood stoves on the streets before the food went bad in refrigerators.<\/p>\n

In tears, Ylenis de la Caridad Napoles, mother of a 7-year-old girl, says she is reaching a point of \u201cdesperation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The failure of the Antonio Guiteras plant on Friday, which caused the collapse of the island\u2019s whole system, was just the latest in a series of problems with energy distribution in a country where electricity has been restricted and rotated to different regions at different times of the day. The status of Cuba\u2019s other power plants was unclear.<\/p>\n

Residents line up to buy bread during a massive blackout after a major power plant failed in Havana, Cuba, Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024. (AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

People lined up for hours on Sunday to buy bread in the few bakeries that could reopen.<\/p>\n

Some Cubans like Rosa Rodr\u00edguez have been without electricity for four days.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have millions of problems, and none of them are solved,\u201d said Rodr\u00edguez. \u201cWe must come to get bread, because the local bakery is closed, and they bring it from somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

The blackout was considered to be Cuba\u2019s worst since Hurricane Ian hit the island as a Category 3 storm in 2022 and damaged power installations. It took days for the government to fix them. This year, some homes have spent up to eight hours a day without electricity.<\/p>\n

Cuba\u2019s government had said Saturday that some electricity had been restored. But the 500 megawatts of energy in the island\u2019s electricity grid, far short of the usual 3 gigawatts it needs, had quickly decreased to 370 megawatts.<\/p>\n

Residents play dominoes during a massive blackout after a major power plant failed in Havana, Cuba, Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024. (AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even in a country that is used to outages as part of a deepening economic crisis<\/a><\/span>, Friday\u2019s collapse was massive.<\/p>\n

The Cuban government has announced emergency measures to slash electricity demand, including suspending school and university classes, shutting down some state-owned workplaces and canceling nonessential services.<\/p>\n

Local authorities said the outage stemmed from increased demand from small- and medium-sized companies and residential air conditioners. Later, the blackout got worse because of breakdowns in old thermoelectric plants that haven\u2019t been properly maintained, and the lack of fuel to operate some facilities.<\/p>\n

Cuba\u2019s energy minister said the country\u2019s grid would be in better shape if there had not been two more partial blackouts as authorities tried to reconnect on Saturday. De la O Levy also said Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Russia, among other nations, had offered to help.<\/p>\n

Residents walk on a street during a blackout following the failure of a major power plant in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

– Andrea Rodriguez and Milexsy Duran, AP News<\/em><\/p>\n

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Cuba\u2019s widespread blackouts stretched into their fourth day as Hurricane Oscar crossed the island\u2019s eastern coast with winds and heavy rain. In Santo Su\u00e1rez, part of a populous neighborhood in southwestern Havana, people went into the streets banging pots and pans in protest Sunday night. The protesters, who say they have no water either, blocked the street…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":9023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dims.apnews.com\/dims4\/default\/d235216\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/5616x3744+0+0\/resize\/1440x960!\/format\/webp\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2F3c%2Fa6%2Fcd9f366342e03e3cdf9eebdf9515%2F397b77d65e904d74b871e6d31f6a5b49","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy-infrastructure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9024,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021\/revisions\/9024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}