Overview
- The island suffered a total national power disconnection that began on Friday and left millions without steady electricity.
- Cuban authorities attributed the failure to a fault in high-voltage transmission lines in central Cuba combined with unstable weather conditions.
- The state utility UNE activated gradual restoration protocols and began forming small power-distribution 'micro-islands' to restore hospitals and critical services.
- The outage disrupted water pumping, phone and internet service, food refrigeration and hospital operations, and the U.S. Embassy warned travelers about communications outages.
- The collapse follows months of fuel shortages and aging thermoelectric infrastructure after tightened U.S. restrictions in January, prompting UN warnings about growing humanitarian risk and ongoing investigations into the grid failures.