Hurricane Rafael Triggers Nationwide Blackout in Cuba

AFP/APP

Havana: Hurricane Rafael, a powerful Category 3 storm, made landfall in Cuba, causing a national blackout just two weeks after a previous four-day outage.

The blackout followed severe wind damage to the national power grid, as confirmed by Cuba’s state-run Union Electrica. The hurricane’s winds reached up to 115 mph (185 kph), along with life-threatening storm surges, intense flooding, and damaging winds across nine provinces, including Havana.

This latest outage compounds challenges for the island’s struggling energy infrastructure, which recently suffered from fuel shortages and a major power plant failure. The earlier blackout also coincided with Hurricane Oscar, which tragically resulted in eight fatalities.

Rafael is expected to weaken slightly as it progresses across Cuba, but will likely retain hurricane status as it moves into the southeastern Gulf of Mexico. A tropical storm warning is active for the Florida Keys.

This storm represents an ongoing challenge for Cuba, with a series of powerful hurricanes further straining the nation’s already fragile energy resources.