He Hurricane Rafael It made landfall as a powerful category 3 cyclone this Wednesday afternoon in Cuba, in the midst of a widespread blackout, two weeks after the passage of the deadly storm Oscar, which also hit the island during a power outage.
“Rafael has made landfall in the west of Cuba“, in the province of Artemisa, indicated the United States National Hurricane Center (NHC).
The hurricane arrives with winds of up to 185 km per hour and has category 3, out of 5 on the Saffir Simpson scale.
In Candelaria, a town of 20,000 inhabitants located 75 km southwest of Havana and very close to the point where Rafael entered the island, torrential rains are falling with winds that strongly shake the treetops, AFP journalists confirmed.
The island is without electrical service due to the passage of the cyclone itself. “Strong winds caused by the high-intensity hurricane Rafael caused the disconnection of the national electrical system,” the state-run Unión Eléctrica said on the X network.
The NHC warned of life-threatening storm surges, damaging hurricane-force winds and flash flooding in part of the western Caribbean country.
The hurricane is expected to cross the island and exit into the Gulf of Mexico where it will begin to lose strength.
Cuba has just suffered the passage of another hurricane, Oscar, which left eight dead on the island in the midst of a total electricity outage. So the blackout was due to failures in the thermoelectric plants and a lack of fuel.
The complete restoration of electrical energy took several days in Havana and several weeks in the affected areas.
“Not a soul”
President Miguel Díaz-Canel reported that he remains in communication with the provinces that will feel the greatest effects of Rafael.
Continuous winds and rain affected Havana on Wednesday. In the capital, with two million inhabitants, businesses were closed and fuel pumps were removed from several gas stations, while the streets looked almost empty.
Thousands of people were evacuated in coastal towns of Sagebrush and Pinar del Ríowhere the eye of the hurricane is expected to enter.
“There is not a soul” here, Marisol Valle, a 63-year-old woman, told AFP as she tried to take some furniture before the water reached her home near the sea, in Guanimar, a fishing town about 70 kilometers away. from Havana.
In the adjacent town of Alquizar, Liset Herrera, 57, complained Tuesday that she had not been able to watch the news on television due to a lack of electricity.
“But from what I have seen on the phone” the hurricane is approaching “and if it passes, there will be nothing left here,” he lamented.
According to the official newspaper Granma“air operations” were suspended in the western region of the country, a measure that includes the airports of Havana and the famous resort of Varadero, in the neighboring province of Matanzas.
Likewise, classes were interrupted in several provinces. In Havana and other towns in western Cuba, the public passenger transport service also stopped.
Since the gigantic blackout, the country has suffered numerous outages due to a chronic deficit in electricity generation. In September 2022, the island already suffered a widespread blackout after Hurricane Ian passed through the west.
The serious oscar floods They surprised the inhabitants of two Guantanamo towns, San Antonio del Sur and Imías, where the eight deaths were recorded.
Cuba is facing its worst economic crisis in thirty years. The gigantic power outage followed chronic blackouts, and added to shortages of food and medicine and rampant inflation.
