HAVANA (AP) — A blackout hit the western half of Cuba on Wednesday, leaving millions of people in Havana and beyond without power in the latest outage to affect an island struggling with dwindling oil reserves and a crumbling electric grid.
Government radio station Radio Rebelde quoted an energy official as saying that it could take at least 72 hours to restore operations at one of Cuba's largest thermoelectric power plants, which shut down earlier and sparked the outage.
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People wait to take public transportation during a blackout in Havana, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
People wait to take public transportation during a blackout in Havana, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
A woman receives a donation from Mexico at a state-run bodega during a blackout in Havana, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
People lounge on a porch during a blackout in Havana, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
A man rides a scooter past a wrecked car and garbage during a blackout in Havana, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
The government’s electric utility said on social platform X that the outage affected people from the western town of Pinar del Rio to the central town of Camaguey.
The U.S. Embassy in Cuba issued a security alert and warned people to “prepare for significant disruptions” and conserve fuel, water, food and mobile phone batteries.
“Cuba’s national power grid is increasingly unreliable, and scheduled and unscheduled power outages are prolonged and a daily occurrence across the country, including Havana,” it said on X.
By late Thursday afternoon, the government said crews had restored power to 2.5% of Havana, or some 21,100 customers, noting that efforts were gradual and tied to what the system's conditions would allow.
“We trust in the experience and effort of the electrical workers to overcome this situation in the shortest possible time,” Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz wrote on X.
Meanwhile, Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy said earlier that one power plant affected by the outage was up and running. “We are working to restore the National Electric System amid a complex energy situation,” he wrote on X.
State media reported that the outage was caused by a shutdown of the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric power plant east of Havana following a leak in its boiler.
Radio Rebelde quoted the plant's technical director Román Pérez Castañeda as saying that crews must first locate the fault, determine the repair method, repair it and then start up and synchronize the unit.
Pérez Castañeda said that a pipe burst in the boiler, causing a water leak and subsequent fire that firefighters extinguished without major damage, according to Radio Rebelde.
The outage caught 63-year-old Odalis Sánchez out on the street with her grandson. She was unable to walk because of a recent operation, so she called someone for a ride home.
Some 200 people waited at a bus stop near her, but buses were not running given a lack of fuel, so they tried to get a ride via any means available, including hitchhiking.
“I need to be able to get home to see what I can do,” Sánchez said. “Without power, you can’t do anything. My grandson also is studying and I have to make him food. Public transportation isn’t helping.”
It is the second such outage to affect Cuba’s western region in the past three months.
In early December, an outage that hit the island's western region lasted nearly 12 hours. Officials said a fault in a transmission line linking two power plants caused an overload and led to the collapse of the energy system's western sector.
Authorities have noted that some thermoelectric plants have been operating for over 30 years and receive little maintenance given the high cost. U.S. sanctions also have prevented the government from buying new equipment and specialized parts, officials say.
Cuba also is struggling with dwindling oil reserves after the U.S. attacked Venezuela in early January, a move that halted critical petroleum shipments from the South America country. Later that month, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on any country that would sell or supply Cuba with oil.
Ernesto Couto Martínez, 76, was trying to find a ride home and said he would confront the latest outage “with the spirit that all Cubans have.”
“We must keep fighting. There’s no other way,” he said. “We have to move forward, blockade or no blockade.”
Last month, Cuba’s government implemented austere fuel-saving measures and warned that jet fuel wouldn’t be available at nine airports across the island until mid-March.
Prior to the attack on Venezuela, the island already was struggling with a crumbling electric grid, generation deficits and interruptions in fuel supplies.
Coto reported from San José, Costa Rica.
Follow AP’s Latin America coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
People wait to take public transportation during a blackout in Havana, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
People wait to take public transportation during a blackout in Havana, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
A woman receives a donation from Mexico at a state-run bodega during a blackout in Havana, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
People lounge on a porch during a blackout in Havana, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
A man rides a scooter past a wrecked car and garbage during a blackout in Havana, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans voted down an effort Wednesday to halt President Donald Trump’s war against Iran, demonstrating early support for a conflict that has rapidly spread across the Middle East with no clear U.S. exit strategy.
The legislation, known as a war powers resolution, failed on a 47-53 vote tally. The vote fell mostly along party lines, though Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky voted in favor and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted against.
The war powers resolution gave lawmakers an opportunity to demand congressional approval before any further attacks are carried out. The vote forced them to take a stand on a war shaping the fate of U.S. military members, countless other lives and the future of the region.
Underscoring the gravity of the moment, Democratic senators filled the Senate chamber and sat at their desks as the voting got underway. Typically, senators step into the chamber to cast their vote, then leave.
“Today every senator — every single one — will pick a side," Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said before the vote. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”
Sen. John Barrasso, second in Senate Republican leadership, said during the debate that GOP senators were sending a message that Democrats are wrong for forcing a vote on the war powers resolution.
“Democrats would rather obstruct Donald Trump than obliterate Iran’s national nuclear program,” he added.
After launching a surprise attack against Iran on Saturday, Trump has scrambled to win support for a conflict that Americans of all political persuasions were already wary of entering. Trump administration officials have been a frequent presence on Capitol Hill this week as they try to reassure lawmakers that they have the situation under control.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the war could extend eight weeks, a longer time frame than has previously been floated by the Trump administration. He also acknowledged that Iran is still able to carry out missile attacks even as the U.S. tries to control the country's airspace.
U.S. service members “remain in harm’s way, and we must be clear-eyed that the risk is still high,” Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the same press conference.
Six U.S. military members were killed over the weekend in a drone strike in Kuwait.
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa acknowledged the human costs of the war in her floor speech. One of the soldiers killed Sunday was from Iowa and a National Guard unit from her state was also attacked in Syria in December, resulting in the deaths of two other soldiers.
“But now is our opportunity to bring an end to the decades of chaos,” said Ernst, who herself served as an officer in the Iowa National Guard for two decades.
“The sooner the better,” she added.
Trump has also not ruled out deploying U.S. ground troops. He has said he is hoping to end the bombing campaign within a few weeks, but his goals for the war have shifted from regime change to stopping Iran from developing nuclear capabilities to crippling its navy and missile programs.
“We should be careful about opening a door into chaos in the Middle East when we cannot see the other side of it,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said in a solemn floor speech after the vote concluded.
He said he was praying for “grace to find a path forward together where more do not needlessly join those who have already fallen in this new war in the Middle East.”
The votes in Congress this week represented potentially consequential markers of just where lawmakers stand on the war as they look ahead to midterm elections and the consequences of the conflict.
“Nobody gets to hide and give the president an easy pass or an end-run around the Constitution,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, the Virginia Democrat leading the war powers resolution.
Republican leaders have successfully, though narrowly, defeated a series of war powers resolutions pertaining to several other conflicts that Trump has entered or threatened to enter. This one, however, was different.
Unlike Trump's military campaigns against alleged drug boats or even Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the attack on Iran represents an open-ended conflict that is already ricocheting across the region. Several senators who have voted for previous war powers resolutions noted that they opposed this one because it applied to a conflict that is already raging.
“Passing this resolution now would send the wrong message to Iran and to our troops,” said GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. "At this juncture, providing unequivocal support to our service members is critically important, as is ongoing consultation by the administration with Congress.”
On the other side of the Capitol, an intense debate over the war unfolded before a vote Thursday. The House first debated a resolution presented by GOP leadership affirming that Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.
Rep. Brian Mast, the GOP chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, publicly thanked Trump for taking action against Iran, saying the president is using his own constitutional authority to defend the U.S. against the “imminent threat” of Iran.
Mast, an Army veteran who worked as a bomb disposal expert in Afghanistan, said the Democratic resolution was effectively asking “that the president do nothing.”
Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs panel, said before the debate that the hardest votes he has taken in Congress have been to decide whether to send U.S. troops to war. “Our young men and women’s lives are on the line,” he said, his voice showing emotion as he emerged from a closed-door briefing late Tuesday with Trump officials.
At a news conference Wednesday, several Democratic members who are also veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars spoke about the heavy costs of those conflicts.
One of them was Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo. “I learned when I was fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, that when elites in Washington bang the war drums, pound their chest, talk about the costs of war and act tough, they're not talking about them doing it, they're not talking about their kids,” Crow said. “They're talking about working class kids like us.”
Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a combat veteran, joins the House Democratic leadership in demanding a congressional approval for embarking on a war with Iran, during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and other Democrats, from left, Rep. Gil Cisneros, D-Calif., Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., demand congressional approval for embarking on a war with Iran, during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., gestures as he and the GOP leadership talk about the war against Iran, during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., center, joined at left by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the GOP whip, speaks to reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., speaks to reporters during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrives for a briefing for lawmakers on Iran at a secure room in the basement of the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to reporters as he arrives for an intelligence briefing with top lawmakers on Iran, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Mar. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., center, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., left, arrive to speak with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. Kaine is leading an effort to advance a swift vote on a war powers resolution that would restrain President Donald Trump's military attack on Iran. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., center, joined at left by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the GOP whip, speaks to reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., arrives to speak with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
