HAVNA - Hurricane Oscar made landfall on Sunday evening in Cuba, where residents were preparing for more chaos and misery as the country grapples with a nearly nationwide power outage that is in its third day.
The arrival of Oscar, after the Friday collapse of Cuba's largest power plant crippled the whole national grid, piles pressure on a country already battling sky-high inflation and shortages of food, medicine, fuel and water.
Cuba's government said power would be reinstated for the majority of the country by Monday evening.
The Category 1 storm made landfall in eastern Cuba at 5.50pm local time on Sunday, the US National Hurricane Center said.
Oscar was packing maximum sustained winds nearing 130km/h, the NHC said, and the storm was moving westward at seven miles per hour.
President Miguel Diaz-Canel said that authorities in the east of the island were "working hard to protect the people and economic resources, given the imminent arrival of Hurricane Oscar."
Energy and Mining Minister Vicente de la O Levy told reporters that electricity would be restored for most Cubans by Monday night, adding that "the last customer may receive service by Tuesday."
The power grid failed in a chain reaction Friday due to the unexpected shutdown of the biggest of the island's eight decrepit coal-fired power plants, according to the head of electricity supply at the energy ministry, Lazaro Guerra.
National electric utility UNE said it had managed to generate a minimal amount of electricity to get power plants restarted on Friday night, but by Saturday morning it was experiencing what official news outlet Cubadebate called "a new, total disconnection of the electrical grid."
Most neighbourhoods in Havana remain dark, except for hotels and hospitals with emergency generators and the very few private homes with backup systems.
The blackout followed weeks of power outages, lasting up to 20 hours a day in some provinces.
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero on Thursday declared an "energy emergency," suspending non-essential public services in order to prioritise electricity supply to homes.