Cubans expressed alarm, with one resident saying it felt as if the country had reached the “bottom of the barrel.”

Cuba restored a trickle of power to its grid by mid-evening on Friday, officials said, hours after the island plunged into a countrywide blackout following the collapse of one of its major power plants.

Cuba’s electrical grid went down Friday after one of the island’s major power plants failed, a day after a massive blackout swept across the Caribbean island and with no official estimate for when service will be restored.