- Cuban authorities announced alerts for the provinces of Guantánamo, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Granma and Las Tunas
The Institute of Meteorology (Insmet) of Cuba reported that Hurricane Oscar will make landfall in the northeast of the country in the afternoon of Sunday, October 20.
The cyclone, category 1 on the Saffir-Simpson scale and with sustained winds of 140 kilometers per hour, will arrive at the moment when the island suffers a total blackout from Friday, October 18.
The Civil Defense warned about the impacts of the hurricane in the extreme northeast of Cuba, in the provinces of Guantánamo and Holguín.
Insmet predicts that in the eastern region of Cuba the weather will begin to deteriorate during the morning of Sunday, October 20. “The areas of showers, rains and thunderstorms will gradually increase, which can be strong and locally intense in some localities and in mountainous areas,” the agency said in a statement published in X.
Likewise, they predicted “strong surges” and flooding in moderate coastal areas of the coast, including the sea wall of the city of Baracoa.
Cyclonic alert in Cuba
The Cuban authorities on Sunday, October 20, raised the alarm for Hurricane Oscar from the information phase to a cyclonic alert for the provinces of Guantánamo, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Granma and Las Tunas.
Likewise, they urged the population to stay informed about the evolution of the cyclone and comply with the instructions given by local officials.
Hurricane Oscar became a Category 1 hurricane on Saturday, October 19, after experiencing accelerated intensification after passing through the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeastern Bahamas.
It is the fifteenth tropical storm of the current Atlantic hurricane season, although the United States National Hurricane Center has described it as “small.”
The meteorological services of the United States and Cuba warned months ago that this Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30, was going to be especially active.
Situation of the total blackout in Cuba
A failure in the National Electrical System (SEN) of Cuba caused a total blackout, so thousands of people on this island They have been without power since Friday, October 18. Although the government carried out a maneuver to restore the service, the recovery process failed and the areas that had electricity were left in darkness again.
The Cuban authorities confirmed on Saturday, October 19, that work began to start the terrestrial thermoelectric plant (CTE).
The SEN crisis worsened in the last week. The power outages simultaneously affected more than half of the island, and caused blackouts of up to 20 hours in some provinces.
The Cuban electrical system is in a very precarious state due to frequent breakdowns in the generating units of its seven thermoelectric plants, obsolete due to their more than four decades of use and the chronic lack of investment and maintenance by the Cuban government.
With information from EFE
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