Cuba’s national power grid has suffered a country-wide blackout as Hurricane Rafael made landfall on the island’s south-west coast as a powerful category 3 hurricane.
In a brief statement on Wednesday, the country’s national power company, Union Eléctrica, said: “Strong winds caused by the powerful Hurricane Rafael have caused the disconnection of the national electrical system. Contingency protocols have been applied.”
The energy and mines ministry had earlier said that a “controlled disconnection of power circuits” would be carried out to avoid accidents and power cuts.
The power cut came shortly before the US National Hurricane Center said the storm made landfall in Cuba’s western province of Artemisa, bringing with it a “life-threatening storm surge, damaging hurricane-force winds, and flash flooding”.
Wednesday’s power cut and storm came three weeks after the island was lashed by Hurricane Oscar amid a four-day nationwide blackout caused by the failure of the island’s biggest power plant and a fuel shortage. Sporadic outages have continued since then.
The outage prompted expressions of fury in online forums, with many pointing out that Cuba’s power grid had survived bigger hurricanes in the past, such as the 2017 category 5 storm Irma. Others complained that power had already been out in much of the country for much of the past week.
“This [announcement] is obviously for Havana, because the rest of the provinces haven’t had power for days anyway,” commented one.
Nine provinces in west and central Cuba, including the capital, Havana, have been placed on cyclone alert. More than 70,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, mostly in Guantánamo in the east, where eight people were killed by Hurricane Oscar last month.
The storm appeared set to pass between Soroa, a small mountain village, and Las Terrazas, a settlement founded as an ideal community shortly after the revolution and is designated as an Unesco biosphere reserve.
“I think no one expected to get category 3,” said one farmer who lives in the path of the hurricane. “I don’t think everyone was really ready.”
In Havana, the storm lashed a city in a state of disrepair, to the sound of howling wind, heavy rain and the crash of falling masonry. Gusts of 115km/h (71.6mph) were measured in the neighbourhood of Casablanca on the edge of Havana Bay.
The office of the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, reported on Tuesday that it was mobilising the national defense council, consisting of military personnel, due to the storm. “We have activated the national defense 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,” he added. “As we have always done since the Revolution, we will overcome this situation.”
In the village of Alquizar, about 30 miles (48km) south-west of Havana, Liset Herrera, 57, said she had been unable to follow the news about Rafael “because there is no electricity”.
The US state department urged citizens to reconsider any travel to Cuba.
On Tuesday, the storm knocked out power in parts of Jamaica and unleashed flooding and landslides. Power outages were also reported across the Cayman Islands after a direct hit late Tuesday, and schools remained closed on Wednesday.
“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.
Forecasters were expecting Rafael to weaken as it moved north toward the US Gulf coast, though it was still predicted to bring heavy rains into Florida and nearby areas of the south-east US by the late part of the week.
The National Hurricane Center predicted storm surges in Florida could reach 1-3ft in Dry Tortugas – and 1-2ft in the lower Florida Keys.
Source: theguardian.com
