Hurricane Rafael’s strong winds knocked down Cuba’s entire electrical grid, ripped off roofs, uprooted trees and downed a baseball stadium light tower as it crossed over western Cuba on Wednesday afternoon.

Cuban authorities said the storm left “severe damage” in the provinces of Artemisa, Mayabeque and Havana, but no casualties, following a broad effort to evacuate potential victims. Almost 100,000 people took shelter in Havana, 32,700 in Artemisa and 25,352 in Pinar del Río.

A few weeks ago, Hurricane Oscar left eight people dead in the province of Guantánamo, and residents criticized the government’s slow response.

Rafael rapidly intensified to a Category 3 hurricane just a few hours before making landfall around 4 p.m. and crossing the province of Artemisa in two hours to emerge at Bahia de Cabañas, just 45 miles west of the Cuban capital of Havana.

On Wednesday evening, the country’s prime minister, Manuel Marrero, called in to a state television newscast to report that homes, infrastructure and agriculture were “greatly damaged” by the hurricane. “Rest assured that we will recover,” he said.

The show could not broadcast images of Marrero or reporters on the ground because the entire island was again left without power.

The state power company, Electric Union, said Rafael’s strong winds caused a total “disconnection” of the country’s electrical system. The outage happened less than three weeks after the country went through a similar event triggered by a failure in the Antonio Guiteras power station in the province of Matanzas.

On Thursday morning, a company official said some service was back in isolated areas in central and eastern Cuba, but providing electricity to western provinces and getting all regions hooked up to the grid again would take more time because technicians needed to assess the damage caused by the hurricane.

Most Cubans were still without electricity Thursday, and communications were minimal. A few videos circulating on social media Wednesday evening showed Rafael’s strong winds bending palm trees, ripping off aluminum roof tiles and knocking down the light tower of the baseball stadium in Artemisa.

On Thursday, the official Communist Party newspaper Granma reported on a government meeting to discuss the damages caused by the hurricane, but provided few details.

Authorities reopened the main airports in Havana, Varadero, Cienfuegos and Villa Clara at noon Thursday.

_____

©2024 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.