HAVANA - Most Cubans were without power for a second day on Saturday, but as in the three earlier major outages of the past half year, they are adjusting -- with resignation.
The latest blackout began late Friday at a substation near Havana and then spread nationwide, affecting most of the cash-strapped island's 9.7 million people.
The authorities said Saturday they were working to restore power.
In the meantime, Cubans were doing their best to get along.
Cubans have been suffering through a serious economic crisis marked by widespread food, fuel and medicine shortages. The island's aging and often failing power system has made things worse.
Ariel Mas Castellanos, an official with the power company in Havana, told local media that the equipment that failed "has been in service for many years and is getting old."
The authorities said Saturday that parallel circuits were helping provide power to priority sectors like hospitals, and some neighborhoods.
"Several provinces have parallel circuits and generator units are starting to be synchronized" with the national grid, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on X.
The outage Friday evening plunged the streets of Havana into darkness, forcing people to navigate by phone and flashlight.
Much of the Cuban capital faces near-daily power cuts of four or five hours -- outages that can last 20 hours or more in the provinces.
In February, the authorities suspended all activity on the island for two days to avoid a widespread blackout.
Two outages in the final quarter of 2024 lasted several days, one of them during a hurricane.