 "Cars drive on Havana's seafront boulevard Malecon as the country's electrical grid collapsed again on Sunday, in Havana, Cuba, October 20, 2024. File Image / Reuters")
Cuba’s national power grid suffered yet another country-wide blackout after Hurricane Rafael made landfall on the island’s southwest coast. The authorities categorised the hurricane at level 3. In a brief statement on Wednesday, the country’s national power company, Union Eléctrica said that the storm caused the disconnection.
“Strong winds caused by the powerful Hurricane Rafael have caused the disconnection of the national electrical system. Contingency protocols have been applied," the authorities said in a statement. Earlier, the Energy and Mines Ministry said that a “controlled disconnection of power circuits” would be carried out to avoid accidents and power cuts.
According to The Guardian, the power cut came shortly after the US National Hurricane Center said the storm made landfall in Cuba’s western province of Artemisa. The authorities noted that the Hurricane brought with it a “life-threatening storm surge, damaging hurricane-force winds, and flash flooding”.
Cuba deals with the wrath of Hurricane Rafael after witnessing the horrors of Oscar
The power cut and storm that engulfed Cuba on Wednesday came three weeks after the island was lashed by Hurricane Oscar and a four-day nationwide blackout caused by the failure of the island’s biggest power plant and fuel shortage. Sporadic outages have continued across the country since then.
The recent outage promoted expressions of fury online, with many claiming that Cuba’s power grid had survived bigger hurricanes in the past. Many pointed out that Cuba’s power grid survived bigger hurricanes, referencing the 2017 category 5 storm Irma.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“This [announcement] is obviously for Havana because the rest of the provinces haven’t had power for days anyway,” commented one user on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Amid the outages, nine provinces in the west and central Cuba, including the capital, Havana, have been placed on cyclone alert. Over 70,000 people have been evacuated from their homes. In Guantánamo at least eight people were killed by Hurricane Oscar last month.
Meanwhile, the office of the Cuban President, Miguel Díaz-Canel, said on Tuesday that it was mobilising the national defence council, consisting of military personnel, due to the storm. “We have activated the national defence council to provide the maximum attention to the passage of Hurricane Rafael,” Díaz-Canel said on X.
“Measures have been taken in each place to protect our people and material resources. As we have always done since the Revolution, we will overcome this situation," he added. The US Department of State urged citizens to reconsider any travel to Cuba.
The Tuesday storm also rattled parts of Jamaica and unleashed flooding and landslides. Power outages were also reported across the Cayman Islands after a direct hit late Tuesday. Schools remained closed on the island.
“While conditions have improved on Grand Cayman, residents are advised to exercise extreme caution on the roads and near coastlines as rough seas and residual flooding risks may persist,” the government said in a statement.
With inputs from agencies.