Cuba made rapid progress in restoring power to the Caribbean island nation on Tuesday, in Havana and in outlying provinces, as emergency workers and laborers struggled to reach areas devastated by Hurricane Oscar.
Oscar, which made landfall near Baracoa as a Category 1 hurricane, was downgraded to a tropical storm, but not before wreaking havoc across much of eastern Cuba, knocking down power lines, causing mudslides and raging rivers.
A powerful flood nearly wiped out the small town of San Antonio del Sur in that state early Monday, killing six people, including a young child, authorities said. On Tuesday, Cuban President Miguel DÃaz-Canel confirmed another death in the small town of Imias in the province of Guantanamo.
More than 25 centimeters of rain fell in many places, eating leaves, destroying banana plants and ending the region’s coveted coffee harvest.
Guantanamo districts were still cut off by raging rivers and mud-clogged roads, hampering efforts to restore electricity and leaving many without access to communications.
The grid has stabilized, authorities said
Cuban authorities said by mid-afternoon they had managed to restore electricity after several failures since Friday, when Cuba’s national power grid crashed for the first time before Oscar’s arrival, leaving 10 million people without power.
About 70 percent of Cuba had electricity on Tuesday, and officials said they expect more power plants to come online soon, increasing that number.
A grid operator in Cuba said 90 percent of its customers in the capital Havana, most of whom were unaffected by Oscar’s passing, saw their power restored by noon Tuesday.
Cuba’s oil-fired oil fields, which are aging and struggling to keep the lights on, have reached a full-scale crisis this year as oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico dwindle, leading to a grid collapse last week.
Residents of Havana took to the streets on Monday night to demand that something be done about the ongoing power outages after multiple power outages, leaving the nation in the dark.
On Monday evening, a large number of people gathered near the intersection of Campanario and Salud streets in Havana, chanting “We want light” and beating pots with metal spoons. They said they were fed up and angry after four days without electricity in their homes.
“We have gone four days without electricity. Our food is bad. Our children are suffering. We have no … water,” said Marley Gonzalez, a resident who banged a pot in protest, surrounded by his neighbors.
Street protests are not uncommon in Cuba. On July 11, 2021, anti-government protests shook the island, the largest since the revolution of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 1959. Those protests followed months of isolation during the pandemic, but also, growing anger over power shortages and blackouts.
The Cuban president spoke on national television on Sunday, shortly before the demonstration in Central Havana, urging Cubans to express their grievances with “morality” and “humanity.”
“We will not accept or allow anyone to destroy property and we will not change the peace of our people,” said Diaz-Canel. “That conviction, the goal of our revolution.”
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