- Hurricane strikes country amid sky-high inflation, food shortages.
- Storm packs maximum sustained winds nearing 80 miles, says NHC.
- Cuba’s power grid fails in chain reaction prior to hurricane’s landfall.
HAVANA: Hurricane Oscar made landfall on Sunday evening in Cuba, where residents were preparing for more chaos and misery as the country grapples with a nearly nationwide power outage in its third day.
The arrival of Oscar, after the Friday collapse of Cuba’s largest power plant crippled the whole national grid, piles pressure on a country already battling sky-high inflation and shortages of food, medicine, fuel and water.
Cuba’s government said power would be reinstated for the majority of the country by Monday evening, with President Miguel Diaz-Canel warning his government would not tolerate public disturbances during the outage.
Oscar, a Category 1 storm, made landfall in eastern Cuba at 5:50pm local time (2150GMT) on Sunday, the US National Hurricane Centre said.
The storm was packing maximum sustained winds nearing 80 miles (130 kilometres) per hour, the NHC said, and was moving westward at seven miles per hour.
In Baracoa, waves reaching up to 13 feet (four metres) high hit the seafront. Roofs and the walls of houses were damaged, and electricity poles and trees felled, state television reported.
President Diaz-Canel said Saturday that authorities in the east of the island were “working hard to protect the people and economic resources, given the imminent arrival of Hurricane Oscar.”
Energy and Mining Minister Vicente de la O Levy told reporters Sunday that electricity would be restored for most Cubans by Monday night, adding that “the last customer may receive service by Tuesday.”
The power grid failed in a chain reaction Friday due to the unexpected shutdown of the biggest of the island’s eight decrepit coal-fired power plants, according to the head of electricity supply at the energy ministry, Lazaro Guerra.
National electric utility UNE said it had managed to generate a minimal amount of electricity to get power plants restarted on Friday night, but by Saturday morning it was experiencing what official news outlet Cubadebate called “a new, total disconnection of the electrical grid.”
Most neighborhoods in Havana remain dark, except for hotels and hospitals with emergency generators and the very few private homes with backup systems.
“God knows when the power will come back on,” said Rafael Carrillo, a 41-year-old mechanic, who had to walk almost five kilometres due to the lack of public transportation amid the blackout.
