The third blackout that left more than half of Cuba in the dark in less than ten days was due to a breakdown caused by forest fires, as explained by Lázaro Guerra, technical director of the Cuban Electric Union (UNE), in the Cuban Television News. The specialist affirmed that electricity should be restored throughout the country by midnight, but after that time many residents in the eastern zone claimed to still be without electricity or even suffer a second cut.
The official explained that the breakdown occurred at around 12:32 p.m. on the 220-kilowatt lines that link Matanzas and Cienfuegos and Matanzas and Santa Clara as a result of “fires.” According to this version, the restoration process was completed at 4:13 in the afternoon, but with a shortage of generation.
“Later, at 5:24 pm, a similar event occurred, the lines from Vicente to Nuevitas were opened and the region from Ciego de Ávila to Guantánamo was left without electricity,” the manager continued with the clarifications, who assured that the substation of Nuevitas (in Camagüey) had enough current to restore the thermoelectric.
However, he added, “a deficit will remain in the eastern zone, because all the units have not been incorporated. From Pinar to Ciego de Ávila the system is energized, with a level of affectation due to deficit.” However, 17 microsystems supplied power to “vital areas” in the east.
The new blackout has outraged the residents of the eastern part of the Island, not only because it is the third blackout they have suffered in so few days, after the one that occurred on Saturday for six hours, attributed to “human error”and that of February 13, by a fire in a cane fieldof which the place was never specified.
“What a coincidence that it is always from Blind to Guantánamo. Please do not lie anymore,” reproached a user. The idea is shared by hundreds of users who cried out on social networks against blackouts that are happening with greater intensity and frequency from the center to the east of Cuba and for which some already have a theory.
“Simple: all the Turkish thermoelectric plants in Havana and in the Center-East are currently only serving the Nuevitas Thermoelectric Plant. The rest is an indigestible stream of justifications that contradict each other,” claimed a user supported by other commentators. “Distribute the patanas throughout the north coast of the country so that there is parity. It is always the East that pays the piper for the West,” claimed another.
Countless UNE clients have expressed their grievance with residents of the western provinces, involuntary beneficiaries of a policy that is favoring areas with more tourism, industry and population concentration, as expressed by the Minister of Energy and Mines himself. last Wednesday the 15th when he reviewed the energy situation of the Island.
In those statements, made In the Round Table program, Vicente de la O Levy reported that some patana is going to be placed – without specifying whether it is new or moving some – in the east, since they are all located in the western zone under economic and demographic criteria.
The minister explained that during the remaining months until May, blackouts of up to three hours can occur, increasing the time that he himself predicted a month ago, when he warned of power outages of one or two hours, as opposed to 12 or 16 that came to life in the summer of 2022 and generated a wave of protests that referred –despite the lesser intensity– to those that occurred on July 11, 2021. Thermoelectric plants, distributed generation (local production with diesel or fuel oil ) and the mobile phone, hired in Turkey, are preparing to face the heat in better conditions, but it remains to be seen whether some forecasts that are already failing are fulfilled.
In addition, and given the poverty of the explanations offered by the UNE, which speaks of fires without specifying where or how they occur, many already openly speculate on sabotage. “To say that it may have been due to sabotage of the system is not a simplistic assumption, it is a logical assumption because no one with a finger of brains can accept that a system as specialized as that could be so vulnerable that a human being could make it fail by mistakenly or intentionally”, writes a user in cubadebate, while others ask for exemplary sanctions. “Just a small comment: review and investigate Cuba’s security agencies well. This smells like manure.”
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