HAVANA -- Many Cubans waited in anguish Sunday as electricity on much of the island had yet to be restored days after an island-wide blackout. Their concerns were also raised as Hurricane Oscar made landfall in the southeastern Bahamas and was heading toward their country.
Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said in a press conference he hopes the country's electricity grid will be restored on Monday or Tuesday morning.
He also recognized that Oscar, which could hit the island Sunday night, will bring "an additional inconvenience" to Cuba's recovery since it will touch a "strong region of (electricity) generation." Key Cuban power plants, such as Felton in the city of Holguín, and Renté in Santiago de Cuba, are located in the area.
Some neighborhoods had electricity restored in Cuba's capital, where 2 million people live, but most of Havana remained dark. The impact of the blackout goes beyond lighting, as services like water supply also depend on electricity to run pumps.
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People resorted to cooking with improvised wood stoves on the streets before the food went bad in refrigerators.
In tears, Ylenis de la Caridad Napoles, mother of a 7-year-old girl, says she is reaching a point of "desperation."
The failure of the Antonio Guiteras plant on Friday, which caused the collapse of the island's whole system, was the latest in a series of problems with energy distribution in a country where electricity has been rotated to different regions at different times of the day.
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