People in Havana collected subsidized food on Tuesday and said the country was facing an intensive period of recovery.

“There are lines everywhere you go,” said Carlos López, a city resident. “You get to a place and there are hurdles and hurdles.”

Tropical Storm Oscar disintegrated as it headed toward the Bahamas after making landfall in Cuba as a Category 1 hurricane. The remnants were expected to drop up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) of rain in the southeastern Bahamas and the Islands Turks and Caicos.

Modesto Hernández, who lives in central Havana, said Tuesday that he and others “don’t know anything about what’s going on.”

“These issues need to be resolved now,” he said. “We’re in bad shape.”

Díaz-Canel warned on national television on Sunday that “we will not allow any vandalism, nor will we let anyone disturb the peace of the people.”

The extended nationwide power outage that followed a massive outage Thursday night was part of nationwide energy problems that led to Cuba’s largest protests in nearly 30 years in July 2021. They were followed by of smaller local protests in October 2022 and March 2024.

All are part of a deep economic crisis that has driven the exodus of more than half a million Cubans to the US, with thousands more heading to Europe.

The Cuban government and its allies blame the 62-year-old US trade embargo on the island for its economic woes, but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that “the government’s long-term mismanagement the Cuban government of its economic policy and resources have certainly increased the difficulties of the people of Cuba.”

Energy remains relatively cheap but increasingly unavailable. The Cuban government said on state television late Monday that it is producing 1,300 megawatts when peak demand can reach 3 gigawatts. Authorities said Monday afternoon that about 80 percent of Havana had intermittent power, but people remained fearful. Classes remained closed until at least Thursday.

Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said Oscar would bring “additional inconvenience” to Cuba’s recovery because it would affect key Cuban power plants such as Felton in the city of Holguín and Renté in Santiago de Cuba.

Many of Havana’s 2 million residents have resorted to cooking with makeshift wood stoves on the streets before their food spoils in refrigerators. People lined up to buy subsidized food and few gas stations were open.

The failure of the Antonio Guiteras plant on Friday was the latest problem with power distribution in a country where electricity has been restricted and rotated between different regions at different times.

The blackout was considered to be Cuba’s worst since Hurricane Ian hit the island as a Category 3 storm in 2022 and damaged electrical installations. It took the government days to fix them.

Local authorities initially said the outage resulted from increased demand from small and medium-sized businesses and residential air conditioners. Later, the security worsened due to breakdowns in old thermoelectrics that were not properly maintained and lack of fuel for the operation of some installations.