FLOOD PERIL IN PR
Hundreds must evacuate from threatened towns
Water was still spewing through the spillway of the cracked Guajataca Dam in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico on Saturday — but by nightfall officials had dramatically backed off their earlier estimates that up to 70,000 people were threatened in towns downstream.
Only a handful of neighborhoods in two towns abutting the Guajataca River must evacuate — just 350 people, Gov. Ricardo Rossello said.
Still, “We don’t know how long it’s going to hold,” Rossello said of the dam.
“The integrity of the structure has been compromised in a significant way,” he said, noting, “It could break at any moment.”
Video shot from a helicopter showed a heavy stream of water pouring from the spillway of the 345-yard dam, which holds back manmade Guajataca Lake in the northwestern part of the island. Water was also visibly leaking from beneath the dam’s main berm.
The 2-mile-square lake provides drinking water, and the dam is a source of hydroelectric power.
El Nuevo Dia, Puerto Rico’s biggest newspaper, reported that authorities found the water leaks were easing pressure on the 88year-old structure.
El Nuevo Dia reported that about 320 people threatened by a dam collapse had been removed.
Javier Jimenez, mayor of the town of San Sebastian, told The Associated Press that he believed the actual number of evacuees was far smaller than the official number, and that only several hundred families were told to leave the banks of the Guajataca River.
San Sebastian is west of the dam and outside the worst flood zone.
All of Puerto Rico remained without power following Wednesday’s devastating blow from Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm with winds up to 155 mph that dumped more than 15 inches of rain.
Ten people were reported killed by the storm in Puerto Rico — a toll expected to climb as word comes in from remote towns.
Officials lost communication with more than half the island’s towns. Some 1,360 of the island’s 1,600 cellphone towers were downed, and 85 percent of aboveground and underground phone and Internet cables were knocked out by the storm, the most powerful to strike Puerto Rico in nearly a century.
Roads remained blocked, bridges were collapsed or washed away, and floodwaters inundated thousands of homes.
Fresh water and fuel supplies were dwindling. Gas-station lines were hours long.
“Hysteria is starting to spread,” said José Sanchez Gonzalez, mayor of the north coastal town of Manati.
“The hospital is about to collapse. It’s at capacity,” he said, crying. “We need someone to help us immediately.”
The storm caused an estimated $30 billion in damage and lost economic activity in debt-burdened Puerto Rico, which declared bankruptcy in May.
“This is without a doubt the biggest catastrophe in modern history for Puerto Rico,” Rossello said.