Cuba's electrical grid collapsed late on Tuesday, leaving the entire country without power in the wake of Hurricane Ian.

Lazaro Guerra, technical director of the Electric Union of Cuba, said the grid's failure, in part due to the storm, has affected infrastructure, state-run media reported, adding that the union vowed to restore power by early Wednesday.

The hurricane hit Cuba at a time of dire economic crisis. Blackouts and long-running shortages of food, medicine and fuel are likely to complicate efforts to recover from Ian.

"Ian has done away with what little we had left," said Omar Avila, a worker at a butcher shop in Pinar del Rio. "It's a horrible disaster."

Ian made landfall in Cuba's Pinar del Rio Province early on Tuesday, prompting officials early on to cut power to the entire province of 850,000 people as a precautionary measure and evacuate 40,000 people from low-lying coastal areas, according to local media reports. The storm left at least two dead in western Cuba, state-run media reported.

Violent wind gusts shattered windows and ripped metal roofs off homes and buildings throughout the region. Roads into the areas directly hit by the hurricane remained impassable, blocked by downed trees and power lines.

Pinar del Rio Province is a rural, lightly populated region but a top producer of farm crops and tobacco. State-run media said farmers had secured 33,000 tonnes of tobacco in storage from prior harvests, but many farm buildings, made with thatched palm roofs, had been flattened by the storm.

Neighboring Artemisa Province, nearer Havana, reported that 40 percent of its banana plantations had been damaged by the storm.

Ian is expected to bring winds of up to 209 kilometers per hour and as much as 0.6 meter of rain to the Tampa area on Florida's Gulf Coast starting early on Wednesday through Thursday evening, the National Weather Service said.

A hurricane warning has been extended to portions of far southwestern Florida as the storm's path veered slightly from previous predictions.

The storm surge along Florida's Gulf Coast could cause devastating to catastrophic damage with some locations potentially uninhabitable for weeks or months, the service warned, urging residents to move to safe shelter before the storm's arrival.

(With input from Reuters)