The evacuation of residents of Guanimar in western Cuba left streets empty ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Rafael
Streets are empty in western Cuba on Wednesday as Hurricane Rafael threatens the island. Rafael hit Cuba on Wednesday, knocking out power to 10 million people. AFP

Authorities scrambled to return power to Cuba on Thursday after Hurricane Rafael's damaging winds collapsed the island's electric grid, leaving 10 million people in the dark, according to a report.

Rafael slammed into the Caribbean island on Wednesday as a Category 3 storm with winds as strong as 115 mph, damaging homes, felling telephone poles and ripping out trees before heading west into the Gulf of Mexico.

For Cuba, already struggling with power outages since last month after the national grid went down and Hurricane Oscar made landfall last month, Rafael delivered another devastating blow to the communist island.

The country's Energy and Mines Ministry said it had started working on the national grid late Wednesday but warned it could take a while to restore power, especially in western parts of the island hardest hit by Rafael, Reuters reported.

The capital Havana remained largely in the dark on Thursday, the report said.

Cuba's feeble oil-fired generation plants have been overworked for decades, a problem exacerbated by a decrease in oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico that have led to rolling blackouts across the country, Reuters reported.

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