(Bloomberg) -- Cuba is suspending nonessential activities and school for the next three days as its fends off the twin threats of a grinding national blackout and Hurricane Oscar.
Power had been restored to some 160,000 clients in Havana after the entire island was plunged into darkness on Friday morning, the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, said Sunday, adding that full recovery might not come until Monday night or early Tuesday.
Hurricane Oscar, a Category 1 storm with sustained winds as high as 80 miles per hour, may delay further restoration. Oscar is expected to make landfall in northeastern Cuba as early as Sunday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center said.
While Oscar is expected to weaken, it could still be a tropical storm as it lingers over the island on Monday and takes aim at central Bahamas on Tuesday.
Electricity rationing and sporadic outages are common on the communist island, but Friday’s total grid collapse has put the nation on edge. While the immediate cause of the blackout was the failure of a major power plant, President Miguel Diaz-Canel has blamed US sanctions for starving the island of hard currency and fuel.
Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, Russia and Barbados have offered to help with the energy crisis, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said Sunday.
In a Sunday post on X, Diaz-Canel said that due to the “complex energy situation and the hurricane” the island was also canceling its annual Oct. 20 celebration of independence from Spain.
“Even so, we have a fatherland, the Revolution and socialism,” he wrote. “That is to stay, everyone is guaranteed protection.”
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