Cuba in Nationwide Power Outage After Hurricane Rafael
By Circles Robinson
HAVANA TIMES – Hurricane Rafael is now meandering in the Gulf of Mexico after leaving a trail of destruction in western Cuba. The storm which crossed over Cuba in the province of Artemisa, west of Havana, caused considerable damage, announced president Diaz Canel on Wednesday night. The details will be forthcoming, he said.
“Major damage in Artemisa, Mayabeque and Havana,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel posted on social media on Wednesday night. “Every step from this moment on is oriented towards recovery. Together we will do it.”
He pledged to visit the provinces devastated by the storm early on Thursday, to make “precise assessments” for the recovery efforts.
The storm tore across Artemisa province, which is an important farming region in a country already suffering from severe food shortages. Heavy winds and rain prompted authorities to protectively harvest ripening fruits and vegetables rather than take a total loss, reported Reuters.
Cuban authorities struggled to return power to the island on Thursday morning after Hurricane Rafael knocked out the country`s electrical grid, leaving the island’s 10 million people in the dark.
The grid collapsed on Wednesday afternoon as Rafael tore across Cuba with top winds of 115 mph (185 kph), damaging homes, uprooting trees and toppling telephone poles.
Emergency workers had returned power to some priority circuits, state-run media said, though Havana remained largely without power at daybreak on Thursday, said Reuters.
Just two weeks ago the island suffered a three day national power outage, the government attributed the collapse of the National Electrical System to generation plants offline for maintenance and repairs and a lack of fuel oil to run back up stationary and floating generators.
During such long outages many Cubans find their little food spoiling as many are also without gas or electricity to cook what could be saved.
Heavy rain was still falling in the capital, Havana, early on Thursday, as surf pounded the waterfront Malecon boulevard, and many low-lying areas and roads remained flooded. Downed tree limbs, trash and debris blocked many roadways, complicating travel and recovery efforts, reported Reuters.
In Havana, many of the pre-Revolution buildings, especially in central Havana, are made of limestone. After many years of neglect, these unsealed and unpainted structures are vulnerable to the intense moisture that comes with storms and hurricanes. After the wet weather passes, the intense sun that follows rapidly dries out the buildings’ exterior materials. What comes next are collapsed balconies and entire outer walls. Cubans, out of habit, walk in the middle of the street after a storm to avoid collapsing buildings. A lot of the older buildings have leaky roofs. Hurricanes exacerbate these leaks. During my last visit to Cuba, I visited a friend who lives on one of the upper floors in the Focsa building (formerly the tallest building in Cuba). The view from his living room was so discouraging. Central Havana looks like a war zone. There were so many collapsed buildings and broken roofs, I couldn’t help but lose hope that Havana will ever recover. After Rafael? It’s got to be worse.