Millions left without power after major blackout hits Cuba's western region

Описание: (4 Mar 2026)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Havana, Cuba - 04 March 2026
1. Electric motorcycle taxis carrying people
2. People at a bus stop waiting for public transport
3. SOUNDBITE(Spanish) Oldalis Sánchez, resident:
++ PARTIALLY OVERLAID BY SHOTS 1,2 - 4 ++
"I heard the National Electric System went down. I need to get home to see what I can do because, you know, without power, you can't do anything. My grandson is also studying, and I have to make him food. Public transportation isn’t helping."
4. Various of traffic lights off cars driving
5. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Jesus Stanley Vello, resident:
"I truly feel depressed. I am depressed. This is unbearable. People are ill, others can't sleep, and children can't go to school the next day without sleep. The entire early morning has been without power. I haven't had power since 4 a.m. I am tired of this."
6. People sitting on the sidewalk, waiting for transport
7. Various of people walking on the street
8. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Ernesto Couto, local resident:
"What might happen is that we have to keep fighting. There is no other way, as far as we can tell."
9. People playing dominoes
10. People walking on the street
STORYLINE:
A blackout has hit the western half of Cuba. Millions of people in Havana and beyond were without power on Wednesday in the latest outage to affect an island struggling with dwindling oil reserves and a crumbling electric grid.

The government’s Electric Union confirmed the outage on social platform X, saying it affected people from the eastern town of Pinar del Rio to the central town of Camaguey. The agency said crews were working to restore power. It is the second such outage to affect Cuba’s western region in the past three months.

State media reports that repairs to the country’s main thermoelectric plant, which caused the power outage, might take 72 hours.

By late Thursday afternoon, the government said crews had restored power to 2.5% of Havana, or some 21,100 customers, noting that efforts were gradual and tied to what the system's conditions would allow.

“We trust in the experience and effort of the electrical workers to overcome this situation in the shortest possible time,” Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz wrote on X.

The outage caught 63-year-old Odalis Sánchez out on the street with her grandson. She was unable to walk because of a recent operation, so she called someone for a ride home.

Some 200 people waited at a bus stop near her, but buses were not running due to a lack of fuel, so they tried to get a ride by any means available, including hitchhiking.

“I need to be able to get home to see what I can do,” Sánchez said. “Without power, you can’t do anything. My grandson is also studying, and I have to make him food. Public transportation isn’t helping.”

It is the second such outage to affect Cuba’s western region in the past three months.

It wasn’t immediately clear what caused Wednesday’s outage.

Cuba is struggling with dwindling oil reserves after the U.S. attacked Venezuela in early January, a move that halted critical petroleum shipments from the South America country. Later that month, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on any country that would sell or supply Cuba with oil.

Ernesto Couto Martínez, 76, was trying to find a ride home and said he would confront the latest outage “with the spirit that all Cubans have.”

“We must keep fighting. There’s no other way,” he said. “We have to move forward, blockade or no blockade.”



AP Video shot by: Ariel Fernández and Milexsy Durán



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