Hurricane Maria slams Dominica
Powerful storm aims at Puerto Rico
ROSEAU, Dominica — Hurricane Maria barrelled toward Puerto Rico on Tuesday night after wreaking widespread devastation on Dominica and leaving the small Caribbean island virtually incommunicado.
As rains began to lash Puerto Rico, Gov. Ricardo Rossello warned that Maria could hit “with a force and violence that we haven’t seen for several generations.”
“We’re going to lose a lot of infrastructure in Puerto Rico,” Rossello said, adding that a likely islandwide power outage and communication blackout could last for days. “We’re going to have to rebuild.”
Authorities warned that people in wooden or flimsy homes should find safe shelter before the storm’s expected arrival today.
“You have to evacuate. Otherwise, you’re going to die,” said Hector Pesquera, the island’s public safety commissioner. “I don’t know how to make this any clearer.”
The warnings came after Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit sent out a series of dramatic posts on his Facebook page as the storm blew over that tiny country late Monday — but then stopped suddenly as phone and internet connections with the country were cut.
“The winds are merciless! We shall survive by the grace of God,” Skerrit wrote before communications went down.
A few minutes later, he messaged he could hear the sound of galvanized steel roofing tearing off houses on the small rugged island. He said that even his own roof had blown away.
In the last message before falling silent, he appealed for international aid: “We will need help, my friends, we will need help of all kinds.”
The storm knocked out communications for the entire country, leaving anyone outside Dominica struggling to determine the extent of damage, though it was clearly widespread. “The situation is really grave,” Consul General Barbara Dailey said in a telephone interview from New York.
She said she lost contact with the island about 4 a.m. EDT. At that point, officials had learned that 70 per cent of homes had lost their roofs, including her own.
“I lost everything,” she said, adding there had been no word on casualties. “As a Category 5 it would be naive not to expect any [injuries] but I don’t know how many,” she said.
The island’s broadcast service was also down Tuesday and Akamai Technologies, a company that tracks the status of the internet around the world, said most of Dominica’s internet service appeared to have been lost by midday. The Ross University School of Medicine in Dominica reported a widespread loss of communication on the island, and relatives of students posted messages on its Facebook page saying they had been unable to talk with their loved ones since late Monday evening as the storm approached.
Dominica is particularly vulnerable to flooding because of its steep mountains, cut through with rivers that rage even after a heavy rain. It was still recovering from Tropical Storm Erika, which killed 30 people and destroyed more than 370 homes in August 2015.
Officials on the neighbouring French island of Guadeloupe reported at least one death: a person hit by a falling tree. They said two other people were reported missing after their boat sank off La Désirade island, just east of Guadeloupe.
About 40 per cent of the island — 80,000 homes — were without power, and flooding was reported in several communities.
Next in the storm’s path was St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the storm was expected to hit late Tuesday. The island was largely spared the widespread damage caused by Hurricane Irma on the chain’s St. Thomas and St. John islands just two weeks ago.
A storm surge associated with Hurricane Maria is expected to bring “life-threatening” swells of up to 2.7 metres above ground in both the U.S. and British Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, U.S. National Hurricane Center forecasters warned.
In the Puerto Rican capital, San Juan, normally crowded streets and beaches were empty by Tuesday afternoon as families heading to safe shelter packed up their cars and pets or secured windows and doors around their home to prepare for severe winds expected to lash the island for 12 to 24 hours. Nearly 2,800 people were in shelters across Puerto Rico, along with 105 pets.
In shops across the island, shelves were bare after people filled shopping carts with the limited amount of water, batteries, baby formula, milk and other items they could find.
By Tuesday evening, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Maria’s winds had intensified to 280 kilometres an hour and additional strengthening was possible. Maria was centred 270 km southeast of San Juan and was moving west-northwest a 17 km/h.
Maria ties for the eighth strongest storm in Atlantic history, when measured by wind speed. This year’s Irma, which had 300 km/h winds, ranks second.
Hurricane centre forecasters said it “now appears likely” that Maria would still be at Category 5 intensity when it moved over the U.S. Virgin Islands Tuesday night and Puerto Rico today.
Meanwhile, Hurricane Jose stirred up surf and rip currents along the U.S. East Coast, though forecasters said the storm was unlikely to make landfall. Big waves caused by Jose swept five people off a coastal jetty in Rhode Island and they were hospitalized after being rescued.
A tropical storm warning was posted for coastal areas in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and tropical storm watches were up for parts of New York’s Long Island and Connecticut.