Seven out of ten residents of Cárdenas have gone three to four days without drinking water, as acknowledged on Tuesday by Juan Correoso Navarro, the municipal director of Hydrology in Cárdenas, Matanzas, in statements to the local TV station Telebandera.
The direct cause is an electrical fault in the Smith Comas well field, possibly caused by a lightning strike, which disabled the transformer at the substation and halted pumping to the city.
"We have been without water for three to four days, affecting 70% of the city, and we are providing relief with water truck deliveries as much as possible," admitted Correoso Navarro, without offering an estimated date for the complete restoration of service.
The failure at Smith Comas was reported on August 15 with no estimated repair time, and the following day it was confirmed that the substation was completely out of service. In an attempt to recover the damaged transformer, the authorities sent a truck to the town of Amarilla.
At the same time, they are working on installing a new transformer at the Cárdenas 6 station, where a 100-liter-per-second pump also became inoperative after being struck by lightning.
"We are currently installing a transformer in Cárdenas 6. That was a pump with a capacity of 100 liters per second that was out of service because it was struck by lightning and was interrupted," explained the official.
Meanwhile, the distribution of water in tank trucks is the only available alternative, although the director himself acknowledged that the coverage is limited: "We are maintaining this until we can resolve the service in the well field."
The water crisis worsens on top of an already deteriorated electrical system. The theft of dielectric oil from a transformer on Calvo Avenue —the second blow in eight days to the same circuit— left more than 3,900 customers without electricity on August 15, and the technical report confirmed the next day that all the oil had been stolen.
According to data from the Electric Company Office (OBET) cited by Telebandera, Cárdenas has 17 transformers out of service and nearly 10,000 customers without electricity supply due to various reasons.
The link between both crises is direct: without electricity, there is no pumping, and without pumping, there is no water. Cárdenas, the second most populated municipality in Matanzas with approximately 78,000 people, relies on well fields and pumping stations that require a stable electricity supply to operate.
But the water crisis is neither new nor exclusive to Cárdenas. In April, authorities acknowledged that more than 300,000 residents of the province of Matanzas lack stability in their water supply, primarily due to failures in the electrical system.
Health authorities have recommended boiling and chlorinating water due to the health risks arising from power outages and supply failures.
Desperation has driven residents to extreme solutions: in the Playa district, the number of makeshift wells dug in yards and sidewalks increased from 20 in October 2025 to over 40 in the early months of 2026, according to local reports.
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