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| Photo Credit: AP. |
CAYEY, Puerto Rico (AP) — Hurricane Fiona blasted the Turks and Caicos Islands on Tuesday as a Category 3 storm after devastating Puerto Rico, where most people remained without electricity or running water and rescuers used heavy equipment to lift survivors to safety.
The storm’s
eye passed close to Grand Turk, the small British territory’s capital island,
on Tuesday morning after the government imposed a curfew and urged people to
flee flood-prone areas. Storm surge could raise water levels there by as much
as 5 to 8 feet above normal, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
Late Tuesday
afternoon, the storm was centered about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of North
Caicos Island, with hurricane-force winds extending up to 30 miles (45
kilometers) from the center.
Premier
Washington Misick urged people to evacuate. “Storms are unpredictable,” he said
in a statement from London, where he had attended the funeral of Queen
Elizabeth II. “You must therefore take every precaution to ensure your safety.”
Fiona had
maximum sustained winds of 115 mph (185 kph) and was moving north-northwest at
8 mph (13 kph), according to the Hurricane Center, which said the storm was
likely to strengthen into a Category 4 hurricane as it approaches Bermuda on
Friday.
Rain was
still lashing parts of Puerto Rico Tuesday, where the sounds of people
scraping, sweeping and spraying their homes and streets echoed across rural
areas as historic floodwaters began to recede.
In the
central mountain town of Cayey, where the Plato River burst its banks and the
brown torrent of water consumed cars and homes, overturned dressers, beds and
large refrigerators lay strewn in people’s yards Tuesday.
“Puerto Rico
is not prepared for this, or for anything,” said Mariangy Hernández, a
48-year-old housewife, who said she doubted the government would help her
community of some 300 in the long term, despite ongoing efforts to clear the
streets and restore power. “This is only for a couple of days and later they
forget about us.”
She and her
husband were stuck in line waiting for the National Guard to clear a landslide
in their hilly neighborhood.
“Is it open?
Is it open?” one driver asked, worried that the road might have been completely
closed.
Other drivers
asked the National Guard if they could swing by their homes to help cut trees
or clear clumps of mud and debris.
The cleanup
efforts occurred on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Maria, which hit as a
Category 4 storm in 2017 and knocked out power for a year in parts of Cayey.
Jeannette
Soto, a 34-year-old manicurist, worried it would take a long time for crews to
restore power because a landslide swept away the neighborhood’s main light
post.
“It’s the
first time this happens,” she said of the landslides. “We didn’t think the
magnitude of the rain was going to be so great.”
Gov. Pedro
Pierluisi requested a major disaster declaration on Tuesday and said it would
be at least a week before authorities have an estimate of the damage that Fiona
caused.
He said the
damage caused by the rain was “catastrophic,” especially in the island’s central,
south and southeast regions.
“The impact
caused by the hurricane has been devastating for many people,” he said.
The head of
the Federal Emergency Management Agency traveled to Puerto Rico on Tuesday as
the agency announced it was sending hundreds of additional personnel to boost
local response efforts.
The broad
storm kept dropping copious rain over the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico,
where a 58-year-old man died after police said he was swept away by a river in
the central mountain town of Comerio.
Another
death was linked to a power blackout — a 70-year-old man was burned to death
after he tried to fill his generator with gasoline while it was running,
officials said.
Parts of the
island had received more than 25 inches (64 centimeters) of rain and more was
falling Tuesday.
National
Guard Brig. Gen. Narciso Cruz described the flooding as historic.
“There were
communities that flooded in the storm that didn’t flood under Maria,” he said,
referring to the 2017 hurricane that caused nearly 3,000 deaths. “I’ve never
seen anything like this.”
Cruz said
670 people have been rescued in Puerto Rico, including 19 people at a
retirement home in Cayey that was in danger of collapsing.
“The rivers
broke their banks and blanketed communities,” he said.
Some people
were rescued via kayaks and boats while others nestled into the massive shovel
of a digger and were lifted to higher ground.
He lamented
that some people initially refused to leave their homes, adding that he
understood why.
“It’s human
nature,” he said. “But when they saw their lives were in danger, they agreed to
leave.”
The blow
from Fiona was made more devastating because Puerto Rico has yet to recover
from Hurricane Maria, which destroyed the power grid in 2017. Five years later,
more than 3,000 homes on the island are still covered by blue tarps.
U.S. Senate
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday he would push for the federal
government to cover 100% of disaster response costs — instead of the usual 75%
— as part of an emergency disaster declaration.
“We need to
make sure this time, Puerto Rico has absolutely everything it needs, as soon as
possible, for as long as they need it,” he said.
Authorities
said Tuesday that at least 1,220 people and more than 70 pets remained in
shelters across the island.
Fiona
triggered a blackout when it hit Puerto Rico’s southwest corner on Sunday, the
anniversary of Hurricane Hugo, which slammed into the island in 1989 as a
Category 3 storm.
By Tuesday morning,
authorities said they had restored power to nearly 300,000 of the island’s 1.47
million customers. Puerto Rico’s governor warned it could take days before
everyone has electricity.
Water
service was cut to more than 760,000 customers — two thirds of the total on the
island — because of turbid water at filtration plants or lack of power,
officials said.
Fiona was
forecast to weaken before running into easternmost Canada over the weekend. It
was not expected to threaten the U.S. mainland.
In the Dominican
Republic, authorities reported two deaths: a 68-year-old man hit by a falling
tree and an 18-year-old girl who was struck by a falling electrical post while
riding a motorcycle. The storm forced more than 1,550 people to seek safety in
government shelters and left more than 406,500 homes without power.
The
hurricane left several highways blocked, and a tourist pier in the town of
Miches was badly damaged by high waves. At least four international airports
were closed, officials said.
The
Dominican president, Luis Abinader, said authorities would need several days to
assess the storm’s effects.
Fiona
previously battered the eastern Caribbean, killing one man in the French
territory of Guadeloupe when floodwaters washed his home away, officials said.
Associated
Press reporters MartÃn Adames in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and
Maricarmen Rivera Sánchez in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed.