Cubans struggle as power not fully restored days after blackout and hurricane hits island

HAVANA — Many Cubans waited in anguish late Sunday as electricity on much of the island had yet to be restored days after a country-wide blackout. Their concerns were heightened as Hurricane Oscar slammed into Cuba's eastern coast, lashing it with heavy wind and rain.

Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said in a press conference he hopes the country's electricity grid will be restored on Monday or Tuesday morning.

But he recognized that Oscar, which hit Cuba's eastern coast Sunday evening, will bring ''an additional inconvenience'' to Cuba's recovery since it will touch a ''region of strong (electricity) generation.'' Key Cuban power plants, such as Felton in the city of Holguín, and Renté in Santiago de Cuba, are located in the area.

Rain and thunderstorms were reported in Cuba's eastern provinces and strong two-meter swells were hitting the seafront promenade in the city of Baracoa, near where Oscar made landfall. No deaths have been registered so far, but local media reported damage to roofs and walls.

Some neighborhoods had electricity restored in Cuba's capital, where 2 million people live, but most of Havana remained dark. The impact of the blackout goes beyond lighting, as services like water supply also depend on electricity to run pumps.

People resorted to cooking with improvised wood stoves on the streets before the food went bad in refrigerators.

In tears, Ylenis de la Caridad Napoles, mother of a 7-year-old girl, says she is reaching a point of ''desperation.''

People lined up for hours on Sunday to buy bread in the few bakeries that could reopen.

Some Cubans like Rosa Rodríguez have been without electricity for four days.

''We have millions of problems, and none of them are solved,'' said Rodríguez. ''We must come to get bread, because the local bakery is closed, and they bring it from somewhere else.''

About half of Cuba was plunged into darkness on Thursday evening, followed by the entire island on Friday morning after one of the plants failed.

Besides the Antonio Guiteras plant, whose failure on Friday affected the entire national system, Cuba has several others, and it wasn't immediately clear whether they remained functional.

Cuba's government had said on Saturday that some electricity had been restored after one of the country's major power plants failed. But the 500 megawatts of energy in the island's electricity grid, far short of the usual 3 gigawatts it needs, had quickly decreased to 370 megawatts.

Even in a country that is used to outages as part of a deepening economic crisis, Friday's collapse was massive.

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.

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't been properly maintained, and the lack of fuel to operate some facilities.

Cuba's energy minister said the country's 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.

The system is expected to move across eastern Cuba Sunday night and Monday. Forecasters said 6 to 12 inches (15.2 to 30.5 centimeters) of rain are expected across eastern Cuba through early Wednesday, with some isolated locations getting up to 18 inches (45.72 centimeters). A storm surge of up to 3 feet (0.91 meters) in some areas of Cuba's north shore in the area was possible, the center said.

Oscar was expected to weaken over eastern Cuba before making a turn to the northeast and approaching the central Bahamas on Tuesday, the center said.

The storm's center late Sunday was located about 45 miles (75 kilometers) east of Guantanamo.

Oscar made landfall on Great Inagua island in the Bahamas earlier Sunday.

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