HAVANA – Cuba was left reeling Thursday after a fierce Category 3 hurricane ripped across the island, knocking out the country’s power grid, downing trees and damaging infrastructure. No fatalities were immediately reported.

Hurricane Rafael crossed a western portion of Cuba on Wednesday evening about 75 kilometres (45 miles) west of Havana, where José Ignacio Dimas returned home from his night shift as a security guard to find his apartment building in the historic centre of the city had collapsed.

“The entire front wall of the building fell,” José Ignacio Dimas said in a tight voice as he scanned the damage early Thursday. Like many buildings in the capital, it was ageing and lacked maintenance.

Some 50,000 people took shelter in Havana, with thousands more doing the same in regions south and just west of the capital since they lived in flood zones or in flimsy homes. The main road from Havana to the southern coastal city of Batabanó was strewn with dozens of utility poles and wires.

Lázaro Guerra, electricity director for the Ministry of Energy and Mines, said power had been partially restored in the island’s western region and that generation units were powering back up. But he warned that restoring power would be slow-going as crews took safety precautions. As Rafael plowed across Cuba on Wednesday evening it slowed to a Category 2 hurricane as it chugged into the Gulf of Mexico before heading toward Mexico, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. (jamiaca-Gleaner)

Photo: A man makes his way through trees brought down by Hurricane Rafael along the road leading to San Antonio de los Banos, Cuba. (AP)…[+]