Some parts of the island nation have regained electricity after the country was paralyzed by a national power outage.
On Saturday, the authorities reported that 16 percent of customers had access to electricity and that they were producing 500 megawatts – a fraction of the 3,300 megawatt need that Cuba had on Thursday when the power grid began to fail.
In addition to the work of getting the electricity up and running, preparations are also being made for a hurricane expected to hit Cuba on Sunday, with heavy rainfall and wind speeds of around 140 kilometers per hour.
President Miguel Diaz-Canel writes in a social media post that the authorities in the eastern parts of the island are fighting to "protect the population and economic assets ahead of the imminent arrival of Hurricane Oscar".
Millions of Cubans were already affected on Thursday evening, local time, by the power outage, when a large part of the network stopped functioning. Large and recurring outages are common, but not total ones. On Friday, the country's largest power plant failed, resulting in a total collapse of the power grid.
The outages have prompted the government to declare a state of emergency and close schools and public institutions to reduce consumption.
