Isabel Rodriguez, 72, said shorter outages were common in Cuba and her house often had no water. “Believe me, it is hard to live like this”.
The blackout followed weeks of power outages, lasting up to 20 hours a day in some provinces, which prompted Prime Minister Manuel Marrero on Thursday to declare an “energy emergency”.
The government on Thursday suspended all nonessential public services in order to prioritize electricity supply to homes.
Schools across the country have now been closed until Monday. Authorities in Havana said hospitals and other essential facilities, which are powered by generators, would remain open.
“This is crazy,” Eloy Fon, an 80-year-old retiree living in central Havana, told AFP on Friday.
“It shows the fragility of our electricity system … We have no reserves, there is nothing to sustain the country, we are living day-to-day”.
