Hurricane Oscar strikes Cuba amid electrical power outage and island wide blackout

Hurricane Oscar struck eastern Cuba on Sunday on the third day of an island wide power outage. The communist country’s main energy facility failed on Friday morning, shutting down out electricity for an estimated 10 million people.

The island faced a complete blackout after its largest energy facility, the Antonio Guiteras power plant in Matanzas, went offline at about 11:00 a.m. local time.

Some electricity was restored for a limited amount of time on Saturday before it shut down again.

Energy and Mining Minister Vicente de la O Levy told the Cuban people that the electrical grid would get up and running by Monday evening and that “the last customer may receive service by Tuesday.”

He said he hoped most Cubans would remain patient as the regime struggled to restore power.

Some Cuba experts disagreed, however. According to Amalia Z. Daché, a professor of Afro-Cuban studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the nationwide blackout could be an inflection point for the crumbling communist regime.

During a weekend interview with NBC News, Daché said the power outage was “a fatal blow of the fatal policies of the Cuban regime on the Cuban people.”

When asked if the Cuban regime would be able to “resolve this issue,’ Daché responded, “no, I don’t think they’re going to be able to resolve the issue, I believe they’re going to continue to blame the United States for their problems as they have for the past 65 years.”

“It is Cuban culture to cooperate,” O Levy told reporters on Sunday. “Those isolated and minimal incidents that do exist, we catalog them as incorrect, as indecent.”

Hurricane Oscar reached Cuban shores near the city of Baracoa at 5:50 p.m. local time causing 13 foot waves off the eastern tip of the island.

A report published by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported that the hurricane degraded into a tropical storm after it made landfall, but that the eastern part of the island could still see “significant” mudslides from flash flooding.

Hurricane Oscar comes at a challenging time for the island. Many Cubans were already facing days without air conditioning, refrigeration and water.

Some reports indicated that some families resorted to cooking with firewood.

Regime officials announced Friday that all non-essential activities, including schools and nightclubs were being shut down until Monday. Non-essential workers were told to stay home to preserve electricity, and government services that are not deemed critical were temporarily suspended.

As a result, tensions rose throughout the island with most institutions and schools closed while some expressed concerns about the operational stability of hospitals, according to reports on social media.

Some Cubans were already complaining to media agencies covering the story on location that it has halted their work and disconnected them from the internet.

Bárbara López, 47, a digital content creator, told the AFP press agency she was “barely been able to work for two days.”

She then added the blackout was the worst she has seen in decades.

“It's the worst I've seen in 47 years,” she explained. “They've really messed up now ... We have no power or mobile data.”

Anabel Gonzalez, a housewife living in old Havana, said she was becoming desperate after three days without electricity.

“My cell phone is dead and look at my refrigerator. The little that I had has all gone to waste,” she said, pointing to empty shelves in her two-room home.

Despite the current challenges, the collapse of Cuba’s electrical grid and energy distribution infrastructure did not come as a surprise since the regime delayed the replacement of many repairs for years.

Meanwhile, Cuba’s communist party appointed president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, shirked responsibility and blamed the United States instead, saying that the embargo was the reason the regime could not get the parts and supplies they needed.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez posted on X that “if the embargo is lifted, there will be no blackouts. This way the U.S. government could support the Cuban people ... if it wanted to.”

The regime’s narrative contradicts historical reports that the Cuban military dictatorship received funding for parts and supplies many years ago from Russia but spent the money in other areas.

Cuba has also faced a sharp drop in fuel shipments from Venezuela, which is taking its toll on the island since a lot of Cuba’s energy is driven by fuel.

“Cuba depends on imports to feed its largely obsolete, oil-fired power plants. Fuel deliveries to the island have dropped significantly this year as Venezuela, Russia and Mexico, once important suppliers, have slashed their exports to Cuba,” reports Voice of America.

Venezuela cut half its deliveries of subsidized fuel to Cuba this year, forcing the communist regime to search for more expensive oil on the spot market.

Mexico also cut fuel to Cuba during a presidential election year. President Claudia Sheinbaum has not said if its supply to Cuba will continue as it did with the previous administration.

Diaz-Canel said Cuban regime workers in the east of the island were “working hard to protect the people and economic resources, given the imminent arrival of Hurricane Oscar.”

"This is crazy," Eloy Fon, a Havana based 80-year-old pensioner told AFP.

“It shows the fragility of our electricity system ... We have no reserves, there is nothing to sustain the country, we are living day to day.”