Cuba slowly gets power back; food & water shortages reported at resorts

This story was updated on Wednesday, October 23 at 12:11 p.m. EST

The lights are turning back on in Cuba, according to an update posted by the Ministry of Tourism of Cuba on Facebook on Tuesday (Oct. 22).

“The National Electric System in Cuba has been successfully restored,” the posting reads.

Whether the entire island is back online is still unclear. However, reports say that more than 70 per cent of Cuba’s power was restored by the morning of October 23, with more electricity expected to come online throughout the day.

In an email to PAX on Wednesday, the Cuba Tourist Board in Toronto said electricity has been restored at 100 per cent of the hotels in Cuba and at all the tourist areas.

The tourist board added that large cities like Havana and other provincial capitals are around 90 per cent restored with more power plants to come online today boosting that total.

The update hopefully concludes an island-wide electricity failure that began last Friday when the country’s main energy plant failed, knocking out electricity for 10 million people.

Power was partially restored in some regions over the weekend, but it failed again shortly after, leaving many in the dark.

The impact of the blackout went beyond light switches. Other services, like water supply, also depend on electricity to run pumps.

Cuban officials have blamed the energy failure on different things, from increased U.S. economic sanctions to disruptions caused by recent hurricanes to the deteriorating state of the island’s infrastructure

Adding to the already-tense situation was damage caused by Hurricane Oscar, which made landfall near Baracoa along Cuba’s eastern shores on Sunday as a Category 1 storm (it later weakened to a tropical storm).

No electricity has forced Cubans to cook campfires along the street and no working appliances has resulted in food going to ruin, reports say.

Protests in Havana have also erupted as dozens of residents, on Monday, chanted "We want light!" while banging pots with metal spoons, Reuters reports. 

As previously reported, Canadian tour operators who sell packages to Cuba, like Sunwing, Air Transat and Air Canada Vacations, activated flexible rebooking policies this week in response to the power failure.

Cuban airports were up and running this week, but Air Canada was one airline that cancelled its outbound flights to Varadero, a popular resort town, on Oct. 23.

Tense vacations

As Cuban residents grappled with the power problem on a local level, tourists on vacation faced various situations at resorts.

Reports of food and water supplies running low at hotels have surfaced this week, casting a negative light on the sun and beach destination that saw 1.1 million Canadians visit in 2019.

“There are mountains of garbage and rats running around,” said Jonathon Renko, a Canadian currently visiting Cuba, who spoke to Global News.

“The Cuban people are suffering, it’s so sad to see, people are hungry, people are thirsty, the line-up that I’ve seen of people just trying to get bread are probably half a kilometre long,” he said.

During the blackout, which later impacted just Varadero and Havana, Renko said resorts had generators, but many stopped working, pulling the plug on air conditioning.

Ellen Francis was on vacation in Varadero with her husband and two children, aged 10 and six. She told CTV News that she didn't learn there was a major blackout in Cuba until they returned home to Ontario on Saturday night.

Francis said the resort staff were still pleasant as they tried to make guests as comfortable as possible, but noted how water dried up during the final hours at the hotel, which was not named.

"A lot of the guests at the hotel were walking around with garbage bins full of water to take up to the room to flush the toilet,” she told the outlet.

She also saw new guests arriving in Cuba who had no idea that there was a blackout. The airports, after all, were still up and running.

An Air Canada customer named Edward Palmer contacted PAX earlier this week to say that his hotel, Melia Las Americas in Varadero, had no air conditioning or hot water ever since the electricity went out.

“The credit card machines have not been operational, although interestingly my card has already been charged for room and incidentals,” Palmer wrote in an email on Tuesday. “The food situation is deteriorating quickly now. Some folks are hoarding alcohol and food in zip locks.”

In a follow-up email on Wednesday, Palmer, who is departing Cuba this Friday (Oct. 25), confirmed that power was restored to his hotel – “and from what I can see, from my balcony, to the town of Varadero.”

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