San Francisco Frontiers - Latest power outage leaves Cubans struggling to get by

The latest blackout began late Friday at a substation near Havana and then spread nationwide, affecting most of the cash-strapped island's 9.7 million people.

The authorities said Saturday they were working to restore power.

In the meantime, Cubans were doing their best to get along.

Jorge Suarez, a 47-year-old lawyer, had come to have a beer at a private bar in the Cuban capital. A small generator helped keep the place open.

"You get used to the conditions," he told AFP. "It's like the animals that live in the desert: they have to adapt to live without water.

"We just have to adapt and wait for the government -- whose responsibility this is -- to resolve the problem."

Adela Alba, 37, owns the establishment, which also serves as a grocery store.

"It's very difficult to work like this," she said. "Electricity is important for everything."

Her small generator helps the place "maintain a minimum of service, because we have to pay the rent and the taxes despite the situation," she added.

Cubans have been suffering through a serious economic crisis marked by widespread food, fuel and medicine shortages. The island's aging and often failing power system has made things worse.

Ariel Mas Castellanos, an official with the power company in Havana, told local media that the equipment that failed "has been in service for many years and is getting old."

The authorities said Saturday that parallel circuits were helping provide power to priority sectors like hospitals, and some neighborhoods.

"Several provinces have parallel circuits and generator units are starting to be synchronized" with the national grid, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on X.

Silvia Torres, a 64-year-old resident of Las Tunas province in eastern Cuba, is in an area benefiting from the parallel circuits.

"Thanks to God, we woke up with light... a blessing because I know that many provinces are still in the dark," she told AFP by phone.

The outage Friday evening plunged the streets of Havana into darkness, forcing people to navigate by phone and flashlight.

Much of the Cuban capital faces near-daily power cuts of four or five hours -- outages that can last 20 hours or more in the provinces.

In February, the authorities suspended all activity on the island for two days to avoid a widespread blackout.

Two outages in the final quarter of 2024 lasted several days, one of them during a hurricane.

"God help us, this country is going from bad to worse," 82-year-old Havana resident Xiomara Castellanos said Saturday. She said she feared the food in her refrigerator might spoil.

The country's eight thermal power plants, nearly all dating to the 1980s or 1990s, experience regular failures.

Floating Turkish power barges and a series of generators shore up the national power system, but the US embargo in place since 1962 makes it difficult to import fuel.

The government is now rushing to install at least 55 solar parks this year -- enough, it says, to supply 12 percent of national demand.

S.Hall--SFF