The country’s entire electricity network collapsed, state-owned utility UNE said, plunging the country’s 10 million residents into darkness – the island’s second complete blackout in the past month – with many areas still without connectivity. More than 283,000 people were evacuated, including 98,300 from the capital, authorities said.

The capital Havana, with 2 million people living in densely packed and largely old buildings, is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. Desperate locals took their own generators to hotels in search of scarce power.

“It is the second time we have had to experience everything that happened: the weather and the problems with the country’s energy network,” local resident Mario de la Rosa Negrin told The Associated Press. “In solidarity, the hotel offered electricity from their power stations to the neighbors so that people could charge their mobile phones and their lamps.”

Rafael is the 17th named storm of the hurricane season. It is only the sixth hurricane recorded in the Gulf of Mexico in November and the third to fall into Category 2 or higher. The others were Ida in 2009, a Category 2 storm, and Kate in 1985, a Category 3 storm.