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STORY: Cuba plunged into a countrywide blackout after the collapse of one of its major power plants Friday.

By evening, officials said a trickle of power to its grid was restored.

Grid operator UNE said it hoped to restart at least five of its oil-fired generation plants overnight,

so it can gradually restore power to broader areas of the country.

The vast majority of the country's 10 million residents were still in the dark on Friday night.

Scattered pockets of the capital Havana, including some of the city's major hospitals, saw lights flicker back on shortly after dark.

Residents lit candles and fires, and got through their Friday evening.

A local, Rafael Pedro Gomez, says small children, the elderly and the sick were suffering the most from the outage.

And a hostel employee, Claudia Amanda Betancourt, says without electricity, guests in the rooms don't have air-conditioning.

Virtually all businesses in Havana ground to a halt on Friday.

Earlier, the government was forced to close schools.

Most state workers were sent home in last-ditch effort to keep the lights on after weeks of severe power shortages.

Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel on TV told people to remain united, and urged caution to residents from misinformation on social media.

The blackout comes as residents are also suffering from shortages of food, fuel, water and medicine.

Officials blamed the outage on deteriorating infrastructure, fuel shortages and rising demand.

They also said strong winds from Hurricane Milton last week hampered fuel deliveries to power plants.

Cuba has long-blamed U.S. Cold War-era embargo and sanctions under former President Donald Trump, for difficulties in acquiring fuel and spare parts to operate its oil-fired plants.

The country's largest oil supplier, Venezuela, has also reduced shipments in the first nine months of the year, while Russia and Mexico have also greatly reduced fuel shipments to the island.