HAVANA (AP) 鈥 A small town in far eastern Cuba was recovering Tuesday from flooding that killed at least six people after Oscar crossed the island鈥檚 eastern coast as a tropical storm with winds and heavy rain.
Cuba's capital was partially illuminated after a generated a handful of protests and a stern government warning that any unrest would be punished.
President Miguel D铆az-Canel said on state television that rescue and recovery work continued in the town of San Antonio del Sur and officials hadn't yet entered some flooded areas.
People in Havana collected subsidized food Tuesday and said the country faced an intensive recovery period.
鈥淭here are lines everywhere you go,鈥 city resident Carlos L贸pez said. 鈥淵ou get to a place and there are obstacles and obstacles.鈥
Tropical Storm Oscar disintegrated as it headed toward the Bahamas after making landfall in Cuba as a Category 1 hurricane. The remnants were expected to drop up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) of rain across the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Modesto Hern谩ndez, who lived in central Havana, said Tuesday that 鈥渨e don鈥檛 know anything about what is going on.鈥
鈥淭hese problems need to be solved now,鈥 he said. "We are in bad shape.鈥
D铆az-Canel warned on national television Sunday that 鈥渨e're not going to allow any vandalism, or let anyone disturb people's tranquility."
The prolonged nationwide blackout that followed a massive outage Thursday night was part of countrywide energy problems that led to the largest protests in Cuba in almost 30 years, in July 2021. Those were followed by smaller local protests in October 2022 and March 2024.
All are part of a that has prompted the exodus of more than half a million Cubans to the U.S., with thousands more heading to Europe.
The Cuban government and its allies blame the United States' 62-year-old trade embargo on the island for its economic problems but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that the Cuban government鈥檚 鈥渓ong-term mismanagement of its economic policy and resources has certainly increased the hardship of people in Cuba.鈥
Power remains relatively cheap but increasingly unavailable. The Cuban government on state television Monday night said that it鈥檚 producing 1300 megawatts when peak demand can hit 3 gigawatts. Authorities said by Monday afternoon that about 80 percent of Havana had intermittent power but people remained fearful.
Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said in a news conference he hoped that more reliable electricity would be restored by Tuesday morning but classes remained closed through at least Thursday.
He said that Oscar would bring 鈥渁n additional inconvenience鈥 to Cuba's recovery since it would affect key Cuban power plants, such as Felton in the city of Holgu铆n, and Rent茅 in Santiago de Cuba.
Many of Havana's 2 million people resorted to cooking with improvised wood stoves on the streets before their food went bad in refrigerators. People lined up to buy subsidized food and few gas stations were open.
The failure of the Antonio Guiteras plant on Friday was the latest problem with energy distribution in a country where electricity has been restricted and rotated among different regions at different times.
The blackout was considered to be Cuba鈥檚 worst since Hurricane Ian hit the island as a Category 3 storm in 2022 and damaged power installations. It took days for the government to fix them.
Local authorities initially said the outage stemmed from increased demand from small- and medium-sized companies and residential air conditioners. Later, the blackout got worse because of breakdowns in old thermoelectric plants that haven鈥檛 been properly maintained, and the lack of fuel to operate some facilities.
___
Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.
___
Follow AP鈥檚 coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at
