‘Can’t live like this’: Cuba hit by second nationwide blackout in a week

Power grid collapses for a third time in March as the Cuban government battles a US-imposed oil blockade.Cuba has been plunged into darkness for the second time in less than a week after its national power network failed again, strained by an energy blockade imposed by the United States.The Cuban Electric Union, which reports to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, announced a total blackout across the island on Saturday without initially giving a cause for the outage.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4Cuba’s lights begin to return, but its crisis is far from overlist 2 of 4Cuba ‘categorically’ rejects prospect of removing Diaz-Canel in US talkslist 3 of 4European groups join aid convoy to Cuba amid crippling oil blockadelist 4 of 4‘We’ll be doing something with Cuba very soon’, Trump saysend of listThe union later said the blackout was caused by an unexpected failure of a generating unit at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camaguey province.“From that moment, a cascading effect occurred in the machines that were online,” said a report from the Energy Ministry, which activated “micro-islands” of generating units to provide power to vital centres, hospitals and water systems.Authorities said they were working to restore power. The last nationwide blackout occurred on Monday. Saturday’s outage was the second in the past week and the third in March.As night fell, capital Havana’s streets were mostly pitch black, with people navigating using phone lights or torches, just five days after the previous blackout.In the touristy old city, some restaurants were able to stay open thanks to generators, with musicians playing music, but the regular blackouts have made life more difficult for Cubans.Cubans face daily blackouts of up to 15 hours in Havana. In the interior of the island of 9.6 million people, the outages are worse.“I wonder if we are going to be like this our whole lives. You can’t live like this,” Nilo Lopez, a 36-year-old taxi driver, told the AFP news agency.