Photo: Cubasi.

Havana, February 13 (RHC)-- The Cuban Ministry of Energy and Mines confirmed Monday that the fault that caused the interruption in half of the country was due to a fire in a rural area, while the recovery of the electric service continues.

According to information released by the central state administration agency, a fire in a sugarcane field caused faults in the 220-kilowatt network in the area between the towns of Sancti Spíritus and Nuevitas, which caused the system to fail in the central-eastern region of the island.

On social networks, provincial companies in Camagüey, Granma and Las Tunas confirmed the progressive reestablishment of the service, whose recovery work is estimated to take about four to five hours.

The Ministry also reported the deployment of generators in several territories for distributed electricity generation to contribute to the balance of the national system.

In September last year, several factors caused a total blackout on the island, which since mid-2022 has been facing difficulties with electricity generation due to maintenance delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and the intensification of the U.S. blockade, which affects access to spare parts.

The Ministry of Energy and Mines devised a strategy to repair the generating units for the summer period and the system received the support of floating plants which arrived in different parts of the country as a result of an agreement with Turkey.