Hurricane Maria devastates Puerto Rico
PUERTO RICO: Hurricane Maria destroyed buildings and knocked out power across Puerto Rico before flooding parts of the Dominican Republic and then regaining some of its strength as it approached the Turks and Caicos Islands and southeastern Bahamas.
The second major hurricane to rage through the Caribbean this month, Maria has killed at least 18 people and devastated several small islands, including St Croix in the United States Virgin Islands and Dominica.
Maria is now a Category 3 hurricane on the five-step SaffirSimpson scale, with sustained winds of up to 205 kilometres per hour and 130km southeast of Grand Turk Island, the US National Hurricane Centre said.
Maria’s strength was not expected to change during the next few days, the centre said. The storm looked unlikely to hit the continental US.
Officials in Puerto Rico were still assessing the damage after Maria slammed the island on Wednesday with winds of up to 250kph. Ranked a Category 4 storm when it made landfall, it was the strongest hurricane to hit the island in nearly 90 years.
US President Donald Trump told reporters the island had been ‘‘totally obliterated’’ and that he planned to visit.
Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello said there was one death reported so far – a man struck by a piece of wood hurled by high winds.
‘‘It’s nothing short of a major disaster,’’ he said, adding it might take months for electricity to be completely restored to the island, which has a population of 3.4 million. He imposed a dusk-todawn curfew through to tomorrow.
Maria struck Dominica as a Category 5 storm on Tuesday night, damaging about 95 per cent of the roofs on the island, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. At least 14 people died.
Two people were killed in the French territory of Guadeloupe and one person on the US Virgin Islands.
Utility crews from the US mainland headed to Puerto Rico to help try to restore the battered power grid and the US military sent ground forces and aircraft to assist with search and rescue.
Puerto Rico was already facing the largest municipal debt crisis in US history.
A team of judges overseeing its bankruptcy has advised involved parties to put legal proceedings on hold indefinitely as the island recovers, according to a source familiar with the proceedings.
In the historic heart of the island’s capital, San Juan, which has a fort and buildings from the Spanish colonial era, the storm left a litter of debris.
Some roads were blocked by downed foliage as teams of firefighters and rescue officials wielded chainsaws to cut through the debris.
San Juan airport reopened for military and relief flights yesterday, with plans for a limited resumption of commercial flights.
With electricity and communications knocked out across the island, workdays evaporated and people busied themselves with securing food, checking on their battered homes and collecting rain water.
South of the capital in the municipality of Catan˜o, 10 residents whose homes were flooded sat around a pickup truck on the edge of the waters and mixed a cocktail of grapefruit juice, cranberry, ice and vodka that they called ‘‘matatiempo’’ or ‘‘killing time’’.
Maria passed close by the US Virgin Island of St Croix, home to about 55,000 people, on Thursday as a rare and ferocious Category 5 storm, knocking out electricity and most mobile phone service.
‘‘The worst is behind us,’’ Virgin Islands Governor Kenneth Mapp told reporters yesterday. ‘‘Now is [the] time to march forward and build a better community, a better territory.’’
About 600 people throughout the US Virgin Islands are in emergency shelters and many parts are without power, Mapp said. ‘‘It’s going to be a long road to recovery. It ain’t going to happen in a week or two and it definitely ain’t going to happen in a few months.’’
Maria hit about two weeks after Hurricane Irma pounded two other US Virgin Islands: St Thomas and St John. Irma, one of the most powerful Atlantic storms on record, killed at least 84 people in the Caribbean and the US.
It followed Harvey, which killed more than 80 people when it hit Texas in late August and caused historic flooding in Houston. More than two months remain in the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30.