Cuba hit by sixth nationwide blackout since January

Cuba’s power grid collapsed again on Friday, September 18, leaving millions of people across the island without electricity in what authorities said was at least the sixth nationwide outage since U.S. President Donald Trump cut off fuel supplies to Cuba in January.

The Ministry of Energy and Mines announced the islandwide blackout on its official X account, saying authorities had begun “activating service-restoration protocols.”

“No one can stand these constant blackouts. There isn’t enough food, there’s no water, there’s no electricity -- you have no idea,” Mercedes Rodriguez, a 60-year-old worker in Havana, told The Associated Press as she waited for public transportation to resume so she could return home. “The country is in such a sad state, and there are no words for what we’re going through.”

According to Cuban authorities, a failure occurred on transmission lines in the western part of the country, causing the power system to collapse across the area as far as Matanzas province. The eastern part of the island was subsequently disconnected from the grid.

The official newspaper Granma reported that “unstable” weather conditions further aggravated the situation.

By dusk, electricity had been restored to 5% of users in Havana, which has about 862,000 customers, according to official data. Authorities were also establishing small power-distribution “micro-islands” in the provinces of Camagüey, Pinar del Río and Granma. Some systems supplying hospitals and other emergency facilities were being reactivated.

Nationwide power-grid collapses have become increasingly frequent over the past two years amid a severe economic crisis on the island. The situation has deteriorated further since January, when the United States imposed an energy blockade aimed at forcing a change in Cuba’s political system.

The restrictions prevent Cuba from importing the fuel needed to operate its thermoelectric power plants, as well as replacement parts required to maintain infrastructure that in many cases has become obsolete. Since then, only one tanker carrying fuel has arrived, delivered by a Russian vessel in March.

The two most recent nationwide blackouts occurred in early August, following other islandwide outages in July and March, as well as several regional power failures.

By Tamilla Hasanova