What happens when a country goes too long without electricity? Death and devastation follow
As the collapse of Cuba’s electrical system entered its third day Sunday, the devastating and deadly consequences of prolonged power outages are coming into view.
Some hospitals are getting power. But the rest are running on generators, and available fuel is limited, raising questions about what will happen if patients are left, quite literally, in the dark. The country’s prime minister, Manuel Marrero, ordered all non-essential commercial activity to shut down, which means that Cubans cannot earn their keep. Schools and universities are shuttered until further notice.
READ MORE: Cuba struggles to restore grid, enters third day without electricity as hurricane nears
Jorge Piñón, a senior research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute and an expert onn the island’s electrical grid, told the Miami Herald that Cuba’s thermoelectric plants have been running for far too long without any maintenance or investments.
“We never believed it would become what it is today. It is a total collapse,” said Piñón, who noted how unprecedented and extreme Cuba’s situation was. “In South America there are countries that have problems with energy generation. But not to the level or depth that Cuba does.”
Experts say that the consequences of prolonged power outages go beyond living in uncomfortable heat and without modern amenities. People get sick and die because they cannot get necessary medical services or treatments. And being kept from work means that many people do not make enough money to afford food and other basic needs.
The population “cannot survive without power,” said Piñón.
No healthcare without power
Cuba’s neighbor, the American territory of Puerto Rico, is intimately familiar with what living in drawn-out darkness is like. The island is the site of the longest blackout in U.S. history, after Hurricane Maria devastated its infrastructure in 2017. In some places it took a year for the power to return.
Right after the storm, Puerto Rican authorities reported a handful of deaths from flying debris, floods, houses collapsing and mudslides. But researchers found in later investigations that thousands of people died from indirect causes. A George Washington University Study in collaboration with the University of Puerto Rico and George Washington found there had been almost 3,000 excess deaths in the six months after Maria.
“A lot of that was due to the lack of power. People were not able to deal with their medical situations,” said Cathy Kunkel, an energy consultant with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis who specializes in Puerto Rico’s power grid.
Puerto Ricans were not able to switch on their oxygen machines at home; keep temperature-sensitive, life-saving medications such as insulin cold; shift themselves in adjustable beds or power their electrical wheelchairs, or attend kidney dialysis and chemotherapy sessions. Living without power can put people, especially the elderly and children, at risk of heat stroke and other related illnesses.
Because there was no electricity to power water pumps, many Puerto Ricans turned to whatever water was available for daily needs. That included rivers, creeks, and contaminated sources of water. The Puerto Rican Center for Investigative Journalism found there were 26 deaths from leptospirosis, a water-borne bacterial illness, in the six months after the storm. That’s more than twice the deaths from the previous year.
For hospitals and medical centers that had to do time-sensitive procedures or maintain medications and vaccines in certain temperatures — or simply need power to examine patients or perform procedures — outages also posed logistical challenges.
Frente Ciudadano por la Auditoria de la Deuda, an advocacy group in Puerto Rico, commemorated Puerto Ricans who died after Hurricane Maria because of a lack of power on the sixth anniversary of the storm with an exhibition. People wrote letters about how loved ones and neighbors died without their oxygen tanks, ventilators and medical equipment. Several people on the island, many of them elderly, have also died in recent years because the generators or candles they used to keep them from being in the dark caused fires in their homes.
The lack of power can also cause or exacerbate psychological issues. University of Puerto Rico psychologist Eduardo Lugo recently reported that the Puerto Rican government’s mental health helpline had received 7,300 calls in three weeks from people affected by issues with the power grid.
“It just complicates things on a daily basis,” said Kunkel. “After Hurricane Maria, especially in rural areas, people were asking, ‘Is the power ever going to come back? Is this ever going to be resolved?”
Economy in the dark
Outages also affect the economy and businesses that drive it. Marrero Cruz, the Cuban prime minister, said the island’s economy was currently paralyzed.
In Puerto Rico, it’s not uncommon for businesses to close because they have no power for the day. Some restaurants with gas stoves work through power outages, but both staff and patrons have to face intolerable heat.
“If you are a small business owner and you have to close your business regularly because you don’t have power or have to invest in a generator to keep operating, those can be major economic costs,” said Kunkel.
Piñón, the Cuba power expert, said that outages would have an impact on not only domestic business but also international travelers visiting the island who spend money on the local economy.
“With this situation and the headlines across the globe, Cuba can expect even less tourism,” Piñón said.
Cuban children and college students could also face delays or gaps in their schooling amid the power outages. After Hurricane Maria, it took a month for kids to go back to public schools, though most classrooms had no power. The outages also raise questions whether they could be a trigger a wave of migration, which has already been at historic levels out of Cuba.
Cuba’s system went out of commission on Friday after a failure at a power station in the western province of Matanzas caused the entire grid to collapse. Since then, the country’s government has been under a state of emergency as workers try to turn the lights back on. On Sunday, the island’s energy agency said that generation capacity would continue increasing throughout the day. But large swaths of the country are in the dark.
Piñón said that even if the energy system is restored, there is no short-term solution.
“We’re going to see some small fixes here and there over the next few weeks. But we’ll be back to this situation again soon.”
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