Cuba roiled by island-wide blackouts, Hurricane Oscar

What happened

Cuba's power grid collapsed on Sunday evening for the fourth time in two days, plunging much of the island nation into darkness as Hurricane Oscar made landfall in eastern Cuba as a Category 1 storm.

Who said what

Cuba's government began preparing for power problems on Thursday, ordering schools, government offices and entertainment venues to close Friday. "We have had to paralyze the economy to guarantee a minimum of electrical service," Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said on television Thursday night. Friday morning, the government announced the "total disconnection" of the national electrical system after a thermoelectric power plant shut down.

Cuba, creaking by for years with decades-old power plants "on the verge of collapse," has long been "plagued by rolling blackouts that last a few hours a day," but "this time is different," The New York Times said. Residents said it recalled "the nightmare of the so-called 'Special Period' in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union." Cuba is now "heavily dependent" on Venezuelan oil imports, The Washington Post said, but the "socialist-run South American country is facing its own energy problems."

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"Most of Havana remained dark" on Sunday, and "people have resorted to cooking with improvised wood stoves on the streets before the food went bad in refrigerators," The Associated Press said. Blackouts also affect other basic services, like water, which depends on electric pumps to feed pipes.

What next?

Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said he hopes electricity service will be restored Monday or Tuesday, though he acknowledged that Hurricane Oscar would bring "additional inconvenience" since eastern Cuba is a "region of strong generation," hosting two key power plants. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Oscar, downgraded to a tropical storm last night, will bring "rainfall amounts of 6 to 12 inches with isolated amounts of 18 inches" across eastern Cuba through Wednesday.