Weakened dam looms as latest threat after Maria
PUERTO RICO: A dam in Puerto Rico weakened by heavy rains from Hurricane Maria was in danger of failing yesterday, posing a flood threat to thousands of homes downstream as the stormbattered US island territory struggled through a fifth day with virtually no electricity.
Some 70,000 people who inhabit a river valley below the Guajataca Dam in the northwestern corner of the island have been under evacuation orders since Saturday afternoon, when authorities first warned that the earthen structure was in danger of imminent collapse.
The fear of a potentially catastrophic dam break added to the pandemonium facing disaster relief authorities in the aftermath of Maria, which has claimed at least 29 lives across the Caribbean.
Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello personally urged residents of the area to heed evacuation orders after surveying damage to the dam, telling reporters that a fissure in the structure ‘‘has become a significant rupture.’’
The dam, which stands about 37 metres tall, was built in 1929 and supplies the surrounding region with hydropower, drinking water and irrigation supplies.
The National Weather Service in San Juan, the island’s capital, extended a flash flood watch for communities along the rainswollen Guajataca River below the dam through midday yesterday.
If the dam were to fail, flooding would be life-threatening, the Weather Service warned. ‘‘Stay away or be swept away,’’ it said.
Maria, the second major hurricane to savage the Caribbean this month and the most powerful to strike Puerto Rico in nearly a century, carved a path of destruction through the island after ploughing ashore early on Thursday.
Arriving as a Category 4 storm, with top winds of up to 249kmh, Maria ripped roofs from buildings, turned roads into gushing debrisstrewn rivers and knocked out power across the entire island, home to 3.4 million people.
‘‘We lost our house, it was completely flooded,’’ said resident Carmen Gloria Lamb, a resident near the rain-swollen Guajataca. ‘‘We lost everything; cars, clothes, everything.’’
Puerto Rico officials have officially confirmed 10 stormrelated fatalities on the island, and the hurricane was blamed for at least 19 other deaths across the Caribbean, the bulk of them on the devastated island nation of Dominica.
Severe flooding, structural damage to homes and the loss of all electricity, except from backup generators, were three of the most pressing problems facing Puerto Ricans, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose state is home to many of Puerto Rican descent, said during a tour of the island.