Cuba lost power due to the storm

Cuba suffered a nationwide blackout on Wednesday as Hurricane Rafael brought winds of up to 185km/h (115mph) to the Caribbean island.

The country’s national energy company said strong winds caused the power system to shut down.

At least 70,000 people were evacuated from their homes before the Category 3 storm made landfall Wednesday night with warnings of storm surge, flash flooding and landslides.

It comes just weeks after millions of people lost power for four days due to blackouts caused by the country’s creaking energy infrastructure. This incident also coincided with Hurricane Oscar. killing at least six people.

Rafael made landfall in the western province of Artemisa, near the capital Havana, at about 16:15 local time (21:15 GMT), the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

A spokesman for state energy company Unión Eléctrica said engineers would have to wait for the storm to pass over the island before they could assess its impact on power plants and the grid as a whole.

By 10 p.m., Rafael had moved into the Gulf of Mexico and weakened into a level 2 storm with a maximum wind speed of 169km/h.

The storm will continue to dump heavy rain across western Cuba through Thursday and storm surge could be life-threatening, the NHC said.

Heavy rain is expected in the Cayman Islands, while a tropical storm warning is in effect in the Florida Keys.

Last month, about 10 million people in Cuba lost power after a power outage due to maintenance problems and lack of fuel to operate power plants.

That outage also coincided with Hurricane Oscar, a less powerful category one storm that left a trail of destruction along the island’s northeast coast.

The hardest hit area was the eastern province of Guantánamo, where more than 1,000 homes were damaged by heavy rains and strong winds.