School is out and all non-essential work places ordered closed until Thursday after the island’s power grid collapsed.

HAVANA — Cuba on Friday was racing to restore electricity after the failure of the island's biggest power plant caused a nationwide blackout, coming on the heels of weeks of extended outages across the cash-strapped country.

Cuba's government said late on Saturday it had restored power to nearly one-fifth of the island's people after the national grid collapsed twice in 24 hours, plunging millions of people into darkness.

Many Cubans waited in anguish Sunday as electricity on much of the island had yet to be restored days after an island-wide blackout. Their concerns were also raised as Hurricane Oscar made landfall in the southeastern Bahamas and was heading toward their country.

Millions of Cubans awoke on Sunday to find their homes still without power after another partial grid failure overnight, deepening a crisis that has raised questions over the viability of the government's efforts to reestablish electrical service.

As Cuban authorities were struggling to reconnect the country’s decrepit power grid on Sunday, a category-one hurricane barrelled into the east of the island, dumping heavy rain and lashing the area with winds.

Electricity outages have paralyzed an already-crippled economy, leading to shortages of everything from cash to running water.

Cuban residents in Santo Suárez, part of a populous neighborhood in southwestern Havana, have had enough and began banging pots and pans to protest the power outage Sunday night.