Hurricane Ian swept across the Caribbean island of Cuba, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake. The damage to the power grid is so severe that the electricity has gone out across the country.
After Hurricane Ian passed through Cuba, there was a nationwide power outage. 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 in 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, although not yet 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 The infrastructure is outdated, the power plants cannot cover the demand for electricity.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.
In Havana, controlled power outages lasting four hours every three days were introduced in August in “solidarity” with the rest of the country – in practice they have recently been less predictable. Frequent power outages during the hottest part of the year prompted mass anti-government protests in July 2021.
