Cuba’s power grid collapses and plunges eastern provinces into a major blackout

Cu­ba’s na­tion­al en­er­gy grid suf­fered a ma­jor fail­ure ear­ly Thurs­day that sev­ered pow­er to the is­land’s east­ern provinces, au­thor­i­ties said, as res­i­dents in the cap­i­tal Ha­vana faced on­go­ing black­outs.

Cu­ba’s ag­ing pow­er grid has erod­ed in re­cent years as it faces a pro­longed eco­nom­ic cri­sis, re­cent­ly made worse by a U.S. en­er­gy block­ade of the is­land, where dai­ly life can be an or­deal for many of the coun­try’s 10 mil­lion peo­ple.

The state-run Elec­tric Union said the col­lapse had stripped pow­er from all east­ern provinces from Guan­tá­namo to Ciego de Ávi­la, and that crews were work­ing to re­store pow­er, but it did not give an es­ti­mate for how long it would take.

The pre­vi­ous day, Cuban Pres­i­dent Miguel Díaz-Canel had de­scribed the en­er­gy sit­u­a­tion as “tense” af­ter sup­plies of oil de­liv­ered by a Russ­ian ves­sel in late March ran out. Cu­ba pro­duces bare­ly 40% of the fu­el it needs to pow­er its econ­o­my.

Rus­sia an­nounced plans to send a sec­ond fu­el ship to Cu­ba in ear­ly April. Ac­cord­ing to Russ­ian news re­ports, the oil tanker left the Russ­ian Baltic port of Vysot­sk in Jan­u­ary but has been stuck in the same place in the At­lantic Ocean for the last sev­er­al weeks.

Pow­er out­ages in Ha­vana, where au­thor­i­ties have been ra­tioning pow­er, stretched to 24 con­sec­u­tive hours on Thurs­day.

On Wednes­day evening, As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists saw res­i­dents in nu­mer­ous neigh­bour­hoods bang­ing pots and pans and set­ting fire to trash cans to protest the black­outs. Hours lat­er, En­er­gy and Mines Min­is­ter Vi­cente de la O Levy ap­peared on Cuban tele­vi­sion to de­scribe the en­er­gy sit­u­a­tion as “crit­i­cal.”

Cu­ba’s pow­er grid is crum­bling, but the gov­ern­ment al­so has blamed the out­ages on U.S. sanc­tions af­ter Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in Jan­u­ary warned of tar­iffs on any coun­try that sells or pro­vides oil to Cu­ba.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has de­mand­ed that Cu­ba re­lease po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers and move to­ward po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic lib­er­al­iza­tion in re­turn for a lift­ing of sanc­tions.

The black­outs have led to re­duced work hours and food spoilage as re­frig­er­a­tors stop work­ing. In some cas­es, hos­pi­tals have can­celled surg­eries. —HA­VANA (AP)

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Sto­ry by AN­DREA RO­DRÍGUEZ | As­so­ci­at­ed Press