Millions of people in Cuba without power after grid collapse

Cuba`s energy minister Vicente de la O'Levy said the government had prioritized hospitals and water pumping facilities as it began restoring electricity to scattered circuits around the country.

But millions of Cubans across the island remained without power by midmorning, according to official reports, forcing the communist-run government to close schools and order non-official workers to stay home until electricity is restored.

The energy minister said he expected the system to be back online by Thursday, but said he would not rush the process.

"We have very capable specialists and they are all involved. We're going step by step," de la O'Levy said.

Cuba's grid has fallen into near-total disarray amid fuel shortages, natural disaster and economic crisis.

The island's oil-fired power plants, already obsolete and struggling to keep the lights on, reached a full crisis this year as oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico dwindled, contributing to multiple nationwide blackouts over two months.

Shortages of food, medicine, water and electricity have made life increasingly unbearable for many Cubans, who have fled the island in record-breaking numbers in the past three years.

Cuba blames U.S. sanctions, which complicate financial transactions and the purchase of fuel, for the crisis.

PLANT FAIL

The Wednesday morning blackout was triggered by a failure at the Antonio Guiteras power plant in Matanzas, the island's top electricity producer, which shut down at around 2 a.m. local time.

Several other major power plants were undergoing maintenance and were offline when the Matanzas plant failed, starving the grid of electricity and leading to the nationwide collapse, the energy minister said.

Millions of people across Cuba were already seeing hours-long rolling blackouts daily before Wednesday's collapse.

Havana hotel worker Danielis Mora woke up frustrated and confused on Wednesday, like many Havana residents, who now experience regular blackouts throughout the week.

"I didn't know it was a total blackout again," Mora said. "Where I am living ... there is no gas either, if there is no electricity there is no way to make food, it has to be with firewood, or charcoal."

Scattered protests have erupted over the past two months over the repeated power failures as well as water, gas and food shortages.

The system failure on Wednesday morning had left the capital Havana almost completely in the dark.

Officials said floating power plants, contracted from Turkey's Karpowership, were generating electricity from offshore of Havana, providing power by midmorning to hospitals and a small number of the city`s 2 million residents.

Cuba's obsolete grid collapsed multiple times in October as fuel supplies dwindled and Hurricane Oscar struck the far eastern end of the island, then again in November with the passage of Hurricane Rafael.

Cuba`s government last week issued a decree ordering state and private businesses to generate more of their own electricity from renewable resources.

The regulations also require businesses to limit their use of air conditioning, among other measures, as the country wrestles with the increasingly dire energy crisis.