Electricity blackout puts Cubans on edge

Cuban Tania Ramirez walks alone along Havana's famous Malecon promenade to relieve the stress wrought by the massive blackout that has plunged the entire island into darkness.

"I feel very disappointed, frustrated and hopeless," said the 39-year-old housewife.

"It's not only the lack of electricity but also of gas and water," she told AFP, 11 hours after the unplanned shutdown of Cuba's main thermal power plant triggered the collapse of the country's grid.

With a frown, she said her "generation wants to continue trusting" in the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, but her "resilience has limits".

Cuba is in the throes of its worst economic crisis in 30 years, marked by sky-high inflation and shortages of food, medicine, fuel and water.

And for the past three months Cubans have been battling chronic blackouts that have become longer and more frequent.

Cuban authorities were trying since Friday night into Saturday to restore electricity.

The unexpected shutdown of the Antonio Guiteras power plant, the biggest of the island's eight decrepit coal-fired power plants, caused the national grid to fail, Lazaro Guerra, director general electricity at the Ministry of Energy and Mines, told state television.

When the power plant shut down, "the system collapsed," he said, adding that the government was working to restore service as soon as possible to the island's 11 million people.

By nightfall, the only lights illuminating the capital of two million people were those from hotels, hospitals and a few private businesses with their own generating plants.

The streets were almost empty, with no public transport and traffic lights out of service.

- 'It hurts a lot' -

Small groups of people could be seen, their cell phones lit, chatting with family and friends. Some came out of their homes to cool off from the night heat, with temperatures hovering around 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit).

"We have a little baby girl and we live in a building that isn't in the best condition. We have to go downstairs and sit here," said self-employed Betsabe Valdes, 40, in the downtown Paseo del Prado.

Her biggest fear is that the food in her refrigerator could spoil if power is not restored soon. "It hurts me a lot," she said.

The grid collapsed a few hours after the government declared an "energy emergency" and announced the stoppage of business activities in the country.

Some provinces have in recent weeks endured up to 20 hours without electricity.

"What we want is electricity, not the explanation they give us," complained Pablo Reve, a 61-year-old teacher who took the blackout with less annoyance than others.

"Now we are playing dominoes and even laughing at our own luck," added Reve.

"To keep going forward is what we have left," he said with a sense of resignation.

By the end of Friday the power company had managed to restore a minimum level of supply with annexed "microsystems", which will be used to start up the thermal and floating plants.

"We have a well-defined strategy" and "we are complying with all the protocols to do it safely", said the energy minister Vicente de la O Levy.

To bolster its grid, Cuba has leased seven floating power plants from Turkish companies and also added many small diesel-powered generators.

But disappointed housewife Tania Ramirez was more pessimistic. "Solutions seem far away," she said, adding "no immediate improvement is in sight, quite the contrary."