STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Millions of people in Cuba have no electricity for a fourth day. This crisis began with a malfunction of the country's largest power plant. Reporter Emily Green is monitoring this situation from Mexico City, where, fortunately, there is electricity at the moment. Hey there, Emily.
EMILY GREEN: Hey there.
INSKEEP: OK. So what are you learning out of Cuba?
GREEN: Well, I would say the situation is bad. Yesterday, Cuba's minister of energy and mines said he expects power to be restored to the island by Tuesday. But that was before the country's electrical grid failed yet again, and that was the fourth time in three days. School has been canceled through Wednesday. Havana's international airport was operating in the dark on emergency power only. I spoke with Claribel. She's a mother and grandmother who lives in Santiago de Cuba, the country's second-largest city. We're withholding her last name because of the risk of retaliation from the Cuban government.
CLARIBEL: (Speaking Spanish).
GREEN: "We don't have food, gas, coal to cook or electricity to hear a radio or watch television. We have nothing. We are lost," she says. You know, I was lucky enough to speak with Claribel by phone because she lives near a grain mill factory that operates a few hours a day, and she goes there and siphons off electricity just to charge her phone. In other parts of the country, some Cuban residents have engaged in small protest. But Claribel says, for now, she and her neighbors are just lying low in dark houses.
INSKEEP: You would like to think that a power grid is redundant, that one problem could not cause such catastrophe. So how did this begin?
GREEN: There are two big structural reasons why this happened. The first is that Cuba is not a fuel-producing country and doesn't have enough money to buy sufficient gas on the open market. The other reason that - is that its power plants are old and they're decaying. The trigger that set off the current crisis was the failure on Friday of the country's largest power plant, and that caused the entire electrical grid to collapse. The scary thing is that there's no timeline for when officials will be able to provide power again. And adding to the misery, Hurricane Oscar made landfall on Cuba's eastern coast yesterday morning. Strong winds; there's a storm surge. And all of that threatens to add complications to an already very, very precarious situation.
INSKEEP: And I heard you say no timeline, meaning this could go on for a while?
GREEN: It could go on for a while. I asked Ricardo Torres what he thinks will happen. Torres is a Cuban economist at American University in Washington, D.C. He says that in the short term, the most likely scenario is that Cuba's political allies step up and send the island much-needed fuel. And the most likely of those allies is Russia.
RICARDO TORRES: Because Russia is an oil-producing country. It needs cash to fund its war. And Russia is also a producer of equipment for power plants and the like. So I think that's the best chance that Cuba has.
GREEN: He points out that even when Cuba gets the electrical grid up and running, the island is still going to have rolling blackouts because there's simply no way it's going to obtain enough gas to generate electricity 24 hours a day.
INSKEEP: OK. So how is the Cuban government defending itself since people certainly cannot be happy to be going without basic services?
GREEN: Right. The Cuban government blames the problem on a decades-old U.S. embargo that has made it very difficult for the island to purchase commodities like fuel. And they say if the U.S. wanted to help, it could. But the U.S. government has dismissed those allegations, instead blaming the island's, quote, "long-term mismanagement of its economic policy and resources." But, you know, you have to imagine U.S. officials are worried. An estimated 10% of Cuba's population has fled over the last three years, mostly to the U.S., and this latest crisis could very well spur many more Cubans to try and leave.
INSKEEP: Wow. Emily Green in Mexico City. Thanks.
GREEN: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
