By Dave Sherwood
HAVANA (Reuters) -Cuba said it was making headway restoring power on Sunday after multiple false starts, though millions of people remain without electricity more than two days after the grid's initial collapse.
The clock was ticking as Hurricane Oscar bore down on the Caribbean island on Sunday, bringing strong winds and rain to northeastern Cuba and threatening to further complicate the government's efforts to reestablish service.
Cuba's meteorological survey warned of "an extremely dangerous situation" in eastern Cuba. The entire region was largely without electricity or communication ahead of the storm, which packed winds as high as 100 mph (161 kph).
The Communist-run government canceled school through Wednesday - a near unprecedented move in Cuba - citing both the hurricane and the ongoing energy crisis. Officials said only essential workers should report to work on Monday.
A third grid failure late on Saturday night marked a major setback in the government's efforts to quickly restore power to exhausted residents already suffering from severe shortages of food, medicine and fuel.
The multiple setbacks in the first 48 hours also underscored the complexity of the work and the still precarious state of the country's grid.
Cuba had restored power to just 160,000 clients in Havana after mid-day on Sunday, officials said, leaving the majority of the capital's population of nearly 2 million people without electricity.
Housewife Anabel Gonzalez, of old Havana, a neighborhood popular with tourists, said she had been without light for three days and had seen her supply of food dwindle.
"My cell phone is dead and look at my refrigerator. The little that I had has all gone to waste," she said, pointing to bare shelves in her two-room home.
Cuba's grid operator had reestablished service to approximately one-fifth of its customers by late Saturday evening when the grid partially collapsed again, forcing technicians to begin the process anew.
Energy and mines minister Vicente de la O Levy told reporters that he expected the grid to be fully functional by Monday or Tuesday but warned residents not to expect dramatic improvements
"We will recover the grid, but we still lack replacement parts. And together with fuel shortages, we will continue to see (blackouts)," O Levy said.
Cuba's national electrical grid first crashed around midday on Friday after the island's largest power plant shut down, sowing chaos. The grid collapsed again on Saturday morning, state-run media reported.
By early evening on Saturday, authorities reported some progress restoring power before announcing another partial grid collapse.
RISING TENSIONS
Reuters reporters witnessed two small protests overnight after a grid failure left Havana in the dark late Saturday, one on the outskirts of the capital in Marianao and the other in the more central Cuatro Caminos. Various videos of protests elsewhere in the capital began to crop up on social media late on Saturday, though Reuters was not able to verify their authenticity.
Energy Minister O Levy said the blackouts were bothersome to residents, but he said most Cubans understood and supported government efforts to restore power.
"It is Cuban culture to cooperate," O Levy told reporters on Sunday. "Those isolated and minimal incidents that do exist, we catalog them as incorrect, as indecent."
Internet traffic dropped off sharply in Cuba over the weekend, according to data from internet monitoring group NetBlocks, as vast power outages made it all but impossible for most island residents to charge phones and get online.
"Network data show that Cuba remains largely offline as the island experiences a second nationwide power outage," Netblocks said on Saturday.
The government has blamed weeks of worsening blackouts - as long as 10 to 20 hours a day across much of the island - on deteriorating infrastructure, fuel shortages and rising demand.
Cuba also blames the U.S. trade embargo, as well as sanctions instituted by then-President Donald Trump, for ongoing difficulties in acquiring fuel and spare parts to operate and maintain its oil-fired plants.
The U.S. has denied any role in the grid failures.
Cuba depends on imports to feed its largely obsolete, oil-fired power plants. Fuel deliveries to the island have dropped significantly this year as Venezuela, Russia and Mexico, once important suppliers, have slashed their exports to Cuba.
Ally Venezuela - struggling to supply its own market - cut by half its deliveries of subsidized fuel to Cuba this year, forcing the island to search for more costly oil on the spot market.
Mexico, another frequent supplier, appeared also to have cut fuel flows to Cuba during a presidential election year.
Recently elected President Claudia Sheinbaum has not said if the state-supported supply to Cuba will continue under same terms under her administration.
(Reporting by Dave Sherwood; additional reporting by Marc Frank, Carlos Carrillo and Nelson Acosta in Havana and Marianna Parraga in HoustonEditing by Alison Williams, Chizu Nomiyama and Lisa Shumaker)
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