An islandwide blackout strikes Cuba for the second time this week as its grid crumbles

HAVANA: An islandwide blackout struck Cuba on Friday for the second time this week as the nation of nearly 10 million people grapples with a crumbling power grid and fuel shortages stemming from a U.S. energy blockade.

While total blackouts have become increasingly common in the Caribbean country, it’s unusual for back-to-back ones to hit just days apart. Cuba’s Electric Union confirmed the outage on X.Authorities in Cuba said the cause of the blackout was a “fluctuation in the parameters” following a failure in a line connecting the provinces of Santa Clara and Sancti Spíritus.

The electrical grid in Cuba is particularly fragile, both due to the lack of maintenance of its aging infrastructure — some power plants are over 30 years old — and the scarcity of the fuels on which it depends.It has been another very difficult week under the impact of the energy blockade: two disconnections of the National Electric System (SEN), almost no fuel to power the plants, and several units out of service,” Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said on his social media account.On Monday, another massive blackout affected nearly 10 million people nationwide. Authorities reported during the week that service was gradually being restored from that outage.

Friday’s national collapse of the electricity system is the fourth so far this year. A blackout in mid-May affected the island’s eastern provinces, while a blackout in mid-March struck the entire island.