Hurricane Maria ‘destroys everything’ and leaves entire island without power
San Juan: The strongest hurricane to hit Puerto Rico in over 80 years has destroyed hundreds of homes, knocked out power across the entire island and triggered heavy flooding in an onslaught that could plunge the United States territory deeper into financial crisis.
Maria, which has killed at least nine people in the Caribbean, made landfall early on Wednesday (local time) in the south-east coastal town of Yabucoa as a category four storm with winds of 250 kilometres per hour.
It has since been downgraded to a category two, but is still expected to punish the island with life-threatening winds for 12 to 24 hours.
“Once we’re able to go outside, we’re going to find our island destroyed,” said Abner Gomez, Puerto Rico’s emergency management director.
“The information we have received is not encouraging. It’s a system that has destroyed everything in its path.”
It was the second time in two weeks that Puerto Rico felt the wrath of a hurricane.
There was no immediate word of any deaths or serious injuries in Puerto Rico, home to 3.4 million people.
As people waited it out in shelters or took cover inside stairwells, bathrooms and closets, Maria brought down mobile phone towers and power lines, snapped trees, tore off roofs and unloaded at least 50 centimetres of rain. Widespread flooding was reported, with dozens of cars half-submerged in some neighbourhoods and many streets turned into rivers. People calling local radio stations reported that doors were being torn off their hinges and a water tank flew away. Felix Delgado, the Mayor of the northern coastal city of Catano, said 80 per cent of the 454 homes in a neighbourhood known as Juana Matos were destroyed.
The fishing community on San Juan Bay was hit with a storm surge of more than 1.2 metres, he said.