Spare a thought for the people of Cuba

The situation went from awful to something much worse.

They ran out of working electrical plants ten days ago, and endured blackouts lasting for four straight days, including one hurricane. Reports coming out suggest that though electricity is partly restored, it's often only for four hours a day. Not surprisingly, the country is semi-paralyzed — schools are still closed and "labor services" are largely non-existent, apart from hospitals, funerals and efforts to repair the damage caused by Hurricane Oscar.

Soon they may run out of people. People were fleeing Cuba before things got this bad.

The big blackout began on Friday October 18th. In the next four days they restarted the grid three or four times only to have it crash again, and while power is sort of mostly restored the structural problems appear to be dire. Nothing really sums the state of the communist economy better than one line on Vox news which described the moment the big blackout began:

"Seven of the country's eight thermoelectric plants, which generate power for the island, were not working or under maintenance prior to the Guiteras plant's failure. So when the Guiteras plant shut down, there were no more energy sources."

As if "seven out of eight" is not bad enough, there's more. Cuba can't get subsidized fuel anymore from Russia, Mexico or Venezuela, and they can't afford to buy fuel at market prices. The economy is kaput. They don't make many things that the world wants to buy, and tourism dried up with the pandemic.

It appears that either the only surviving plant suffered a malfunction, or the nation actually ran out of fuel, or both. Reuters is somewhat vague:

Cuba power grid: How it collapsed and what comes next

Reuters

Long-time ally Venezuela slashed fuel shipments to Cuba by half this year as it struggles to assure supply at home. Allies Russia and Mexico have also cut exports to Cuba, forcing the cash-strapped government to seek far pricer fuel on the spot market.