Nfter the passage of hurricane “Ian” there was a nationwide power outage in Cuba. This is due to weather-related damage to the power grid, said the state electricity provider of the socialist Caribbean state, UNE, on Tuesday evening (local time) on Facebook. Restoring the power supply is a complicated process that will take place gradually during the night and in the morning. In the capital, Havana, lights could only be seen in the few buildings that had generators — mostly hotels.
The storm made landfall in western Cuba early Tuesday morning (local time) as a category 3 of 5 hurricane. It caused great destruction: there were floods, buildings and infrastructure were severely damaged, trees were uprooted – also in Havana. The full extent was still unclear. “The damage is great, even if it has not yet been statistically recorded,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on Twitter after a visit to the province of Pinar del Río, which was particularly hard hit. The center of the hurricane has meanwhile moved further towards the US state of Florida.
Cuba’s power supply was very unreliable even before “Ian”. The infrastructure is outdated, the power plants cannot cover the demand for electricity. Many parts of the country are experiencing frequent, long power outages – some social media users have reported daily outages of up to 18 hours in recent months. Havana introduced controlled power outages of four hours every three days in August in “solidarity” with the rest of the country – in practice they have been less predictable of late. Frequent power outages during the hottest season prompted mass anti-government protests in July 2021.
