Hurricane Rafael knocks out power in Cuba, weeks after nationwide blackout

Cuba was without power once again as strong winds from Hurricane Rafael disconnected the power across the island, the county’s electric company said, weeks after another nationwide blackout. 

The Category 3 storm swirled past the Cayman Islands on its way toward western Cuba on Wednesday afternoon, making landfall in the province of Artemisa, just east of Playa Majana. The hurricane made landfall at 4:15 p.m. with maximum sustained winds near 115 mph, the National Hurricane Center said. 

Millions of Cubans were without power in October, which prompted the government to implement emergency measures to slash demand, including suspending classes, shutting down some state-owned workplaces and canceling nonessential services. Cubans without power resorted to cooking with improvised wood stoves on the streets before the food went bad in refrigerators as they waited for the power to go back on.

The outage was the latest in a series of problems with energy distribution in a country where electricity has been restricted and rotated to different regions at different times of the day. Various power installations in the country were damaged by Hurricane Ian leaving some homes without electricity for up to eight hours a day. The October blackout was considered to be Cuba’s worst outage in two years and power authorities took days to restore power for about 2 million people.  

The U.S. State Department issued an advisory for Cuba on Tuesday afternoon, offering departure flights to non-essential staff and American citizens, and advising others to “reconsider travel to Cuba due to the potential impact of Tropical Storm Rafael,” before the storm grew into a hurricane.

On Tuesday morning, the Cuban Civil Defense called on Cubans to prepare as soon as possible, because when the storm makes landfall “it’s important to stay where you are.” The day before, authorities said they had issued an evacuation order for 37,000 people in far eastern Cuba, in the province of Guantanamo, due to bad weather.

Hurricane Rafael’s path is expected to continue toward Florida and nearby areas of the southeast U.S. with heavy rainfall forecast. Storm surges are predicted, and surges could reach 1 to 3 feet in Dry Tortugas and 1 to 2 feet in the Lower Florida Keys.