As Hurricane Oscar begins to roll across Cuba, many Cubans were still suffering Sunday without electricity, which had yet to be totally restored after days of blackout. Some neighbourhoods had electricity restored in Cuba’s capital, where 2 million people live, but most of Havana remained dark.

The streets of Havana, where 2 million people live, were quiet, with few cars driving by after a night that was lit by candles and lamps. The impact of the blackout goes beyond lighting, as services like water supply also depend on electricity to run pumps.

About half of Cuba was plunged into darkness on Thursday evening, followed by the entire island on Friday morning after the plant failed.

Havana’s electricity company said in a statement earlier Saturday that a part of its western system was disconnected “after the exit of one of the plants that was delivering service.”

The blackout was considered to be Cuba’s worst in two years, after a Category 3 hurricane damaged power installations and it took days for the government to fix them. This year, some homes have spent up to eight hours a day without electricity.

Besides the Antonio Guiteras plant, whose failure on Friday affected the entire national system, Cuba has several others and it wasn’t immediately clear whether they remained functional.

There is no official estimate for when the blackout will end. Even in a country that is used to outages as part of a deepening economic crisis, Friday’s collapse was massive.

The Cuban government has announced emergency measures to slash electricity demand, including suspending school and university classes, shutting down some state-owned workplaces and cancelling nonessential services.

Local authorities said the outage, which started on a small scale Thursday, stemmed from increased demand from small- and medium-sized companies and residential air conditioners.

Later, the blackout got worse due to breakdowns in old thermoelectric plants that haven’t been properly maintained and the lack of fuel to operate some facilities.

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