Hurricane Maria ‘devastates’ Dominica
Category 5 storm takes aim at other islands
POINTE-A-PITRE: Hurricane Maria battered the Caribbean island of Dominica yesterday, with its prime minister predicting potentially grave losses and mass destruction as winds and rain from the Category Five storm barrelled into territories still reeling from Irma.
With residents fleeing homes Maria made landfall with top winds swirling at 257 kilometres per hour, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
“We have lost all what money can buy and replace,” Dominica’s premier Roosevelt Skerrit posted on Facebook, saying there were initial reports of “widespread devastation”.
“My greatest fear for the morning is that we will wake to news of serious physical injury and possible deaths as a result of likely landslides triggered by persistent rains.”
Earlier, he said his roof had been blown off, his house was flooding and he was “at the complete mercy of the hurricane”.
“Rough! Rough! Rough!” he wrote on Facebook, later adding that he had been rescued.
Dangerous storm surges, destructive waves, flash floods and mudslides also threaten the Leeward Islands — the island group that includes Martinique, Puerto Rico and the US and British Virgin Islands — the NHC said.
The centre earlier warned that “preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion” as the eye of the storm approached Dominica, eventually hitting at 9:15pm (8:15am yesterday in Thailand).
Guadeloupe — the bridgehead for aid for Irma-hit French territories — ordered all residents to take shelter in a maximumlevel “violet alert” effective from 8pm as powerful rains drenched the French Caribbean island.
St Kitts, Nevis, the British island of Montserrat, Culebra and Vieques were also on alert.
On Martinique, also part of France, energy supplier EDF said power had been cut off from 16,000 homes, although a hurricane warning on the island was later downgraded to a tropical storm.
In rain-lashed St Lucia, which also faced a tropical storm warning, flooding, mudslides and power outages were reported in parts of the island.
Dominica’s airport and ports have been closed, and the local water company shut down its systems to protect its intake valves from debris churned up by the storm.
Meanwhile in Pointe-a-Pitre, Elodie Corte, the boss of a metalworking company, said there had been frantic preparations to limit the damage from the storm.
“We spent the morning strapping down the aluminium to stop it from flying away if the winds are strong,” she said.
But she worried that the torrential rains forecast could flood her home.
Criticised for the pace of relief efforts in their overseas territories devastated by Irma, Britain, France and the Netherlands said they were boosting resources for the Caribbean as Maria approaches.
“We are planning for the unexpected, we are planning for the worst,” said Chris Austin, head of a UK military task force set up to deal with Irma, as the British Virgin Islands readied for the storm.
On the island of St Martin, which is split between France and the Netherlands, authorities announced a red alert ahead of Maria’s arrival.