HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba began to slowly restore power after the country’s national electric grid collapsed earlier on Monday, the latest blow to an island already suffering ‌from severe energy, fuel and medicine shortages.
Grid operator UNE said it was providing electricity to some vital services, including hospitals and food production centers, but by late afternoon was able to serve only 1% of the capital Havana’s demand.
Officials have not yet said what caused the grid to collapse.
Cuba has for months suffered from hours-long and, more recently, days-long power outages linked in part to a decrepit grid and a U.S.-imposed oil blockade that has cut off the island’s fuel supply.
The nationwide outage and slow recovery are more bad news for Cubans already exhausted from rolling blackouts that make it impossible for many to work or sleep in the Caribbean summer heat.
Nearly two-thirds of the country was already without power when the grid collapsed on Monday, so many of the island’s residents, largely without communications and accustomed to the ‌lack of electricity, hardly registered the difference.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump cut off fuel shipments from Venezuela to Cuba earlier this year and also pressured Mexico to halt shipments, and has threatened to slap tariffs on any nation delivering oil to the island nation.
The U.S. has called Cuba’s government a national security threat and says such sanctions are necessary to force a change in the island’s government, a long-time aim of U.S. policy toward Cuba.
Cuba, 90 miles (145 km) off the shores of the Florida Keys, has long maintained it is not a threat to the United States.