Havana – A sense of dread hung over many Cubans on Sunday as the power supply to large portions of the island remained elusive following days of widespread blackouts.

In some neighborhoods of Havana, home to around 2 million residents, electricity was slowly being restored, but the majority of the city was still in darkness. The ramifications of these outages extended beyond mere lighting; essential services such as water supply, which relies on electric-powered pumps, were also severely impacted.

To manage the dire situation, residents took to cooking with makeshift wood stoves set up in the streets, desperate to salvage perishable food items from their refrigerators.

Emotionally overwhelmed, Ylenis de la Caridad Napoles, a mother of a 7-year-old girl, expressed her growing “desperation” over the ongoing crisis.

The blackout was a result of the failure of the Antonio Guiteras power plant on Friday, which triggered a collapse of the island’s entire electrical system. This incident followed a troubling pattern of energy distribution issues that have plagued the country, which often experiences rotational blackouts throughout the day.

Long lines formed outside the few bakeries that managed to reopen, with people waiting for hours to purchase bread.

One resident, Rosa Rodríguez, lamented that she had gone without electricity for four consecutive days, stating, “We have millions of problems, and none of them are solved.”

This blackout has been described as Cuba’s most severe in two years, eclipsing even the outages that followed Hurricane Ian’s arrival as a Category 3 storm in 2022, which caused significant damage to the nation’s power infrastructure. This year alone, some households have endured power interruptions lasting up to eight hours daily.

No official timeline has been provided for the restoration of electricity across the island. Even in a nation accustomed to frequent outages amid an escalating economic crisis, Friday’s extensive power failure was unprecedented in its scale.

In response to the crisis, the Cuban government has instituted emergency protocols to reduce electricity demand. Measures include the suspension of classes at schools and universities, the closure of certain state-run businesses, and the cancellation of non-essential services.