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Power goes out on entire island of Cuba, leaving 10 million people without electricity
Cubans expressed alarm, with one resident saying it felt as if the country had reached the “bottom of the barrel.”
Cuba's power grid fails leaving millions without electricity
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Oct. 18, 2024, 10:30 PM GMT+3 / Updated Oct. 19, 2024, 2:41 AM GMT+3
By Orlando Matos and Carmen Sesin
HAVANA — The electricity went out Friday in Cuba, affecting the entire island's population of 10 million after one of its main power plants failed, according to Cuba’s energy ministry.
On Friday evening, authorities announced power had been restored to about 20,000 residents of the capital, Havana, which has a population of 2 million.
Power outages have been chronic in Cuba for years and have worsened in recent months. But the situation was so critical in the past three days that the government took measures to keep the lights on.
On Thursday night, it announced schools would close and most state workers would stay home Friday in an effort to conserve energy. But it wasn’t enough and by 11 a.m. Friday, Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric, the largest power plant, went offline causing a grid failure.
The communist-run country’s aging and decrepit infrastructure has frequent outages because of difficulties with maintenance and lack of fuel. In some provinces outside Havana, many people have been facing blackouts that last up to 20 hours at a time.
Cuba's president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, wrote on X that they are giving “absolute priority” to solving the problem, and that “there won’t be any rest” until the power comes back on.
Cuba’s prime minister, Manuel Marrero, on Thursday blamed the ongoing blackouts on the deteriorating infrastructure, fuel shortages and rising demand among its people.
While demand for electricity has gone up, the supply of oil has been greatly limited. Cuba’s ally and main oil supplier, Venezuela, has decreased the amount of shipments it sends to the island. Oil shipments from other countries, like Russia and Mexico, have also been greatly diminished.
Authorities said they did not know how long it would take to re-establish power to the entire island.
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