Cuba was once again left without power as strong winds from Hurricane Rafael knocked out power across the island, the country’s power company said, weeks after another blackout. electricity nationwide.
THE Category 3 storm passed the Cayman Islands heading toward western Cuba on Wednesday afternoon, making landfall in Artemisa province, just east of Playa Majana. The hurricane made landfall at 4:15 p.m. with maximum sustained winds gusting near 185 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.
Millions of Cubans were without electricity in Octoberprompting the government to implement emergency measures to reduce demand, including suspending classes, closing some public workplaces and cutting non-essential services. Cubans without electricity resorted to cooking with improvised wood stoves in the streets before food deteriorated in refrigerators while waiting for power to be restored.
The outage is the latest in a series of problems with power distribution in a country where electricity has been restricted and spread across different regions at different times of the day. Various electrical installations across the country were damaged by Hurricane Ian, leaving some homes without power for up to eight hours a day. The October blackout was considered Cuba’s worst outage in two years and took several days for electric authorities to to restore power for around 2 million people.
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The US State Department issued an advisory for Cuba on Tuesday afternoon, offering departure flights to non-essential personnel and US citizens, and advising others to “reconsider travel to Cuba due to the potential impact of Tropical Storm Rafael,” before the storm strengthened into a hurricane.
On Tuesday morning, Cuban Civil Defense called on Cubans to prepare as soon as possible, because when the storm makes landfall, “it is important to stay where you are.” The day before, the authorities announced that they had issued an evacuation order for 37,000 people in the far east of Cuba, in the province of Guantanamo, due to bad weather.
Hurricane Rafael’s path is expected to continue toward Florida and neighboring areas of the southeastern United States, with heavy rainfall expected. Storm surge is forecast and storm surges could reach 1 to 3 feet in Dry Tortugas and 1 to 2 feet in the Lower Florida Keys.
