October 19, (THEWILL) – Cuba suffered a second nationwide blackout Saturday morning, hours after officials said power was being slowly restored.
“At 6:15 am a new total outage occurred of the national electroenergetic system. The Electric Union is working to reestablish it”, the Cuba Electrical Union said in a statement.
Saturday’s blackout follows a shutdown of Cuba’s electrical grid on Friday, after one its major power plants failed.
Millions of people have been left without power over the last several days as Cuban electrical grid repeatedly collapsed. The Energy ministry blamed the development on increased US economic sanctions as well as recent hurricanes and poor power infrastructure.
In a televised address on Thursday, Cuban Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, said much of the country’s limited production was stopped to avoid leaving people completely without power.
“We have been paralysing economic activity to generate (power) to the population”, he said.
The country’s health minister, José Angel Portal Miranda, said on X that the country’s health facilities were running on generators and that health workers continued to provide vital services.
Classes at schools were cancelled from Friday through the weekend, nightclubs and recreation centres were ordered closed, and only “indispensable workers” should show up at their jobs, according to a list of energy-saving measures published by the state-run website Cubadebate earlier on Friday.
