Fiona churns over Turks and Caicos
Heavy rain lingers over Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic
CAYEY, Puerto Rico — Hurricane Fiona blasted the Turks and Caicos Islands on Tuesday as a Category 3 storm after devastating Puerto Rico, where most people remained without electricity or running water and rescuers used heavy equipment to lift survivors to safety.
The storm’s eye passed close to Grand Turk, the small British territory’s capital island, on Tuesday after the government imposed a curfew and urged people to flee flood-prone areas. Storm surge could raise water levels there by as much as 5 to 8 feet above normal, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
Late Tuesday afternoon, the storm was centered 50 miles north of North Caicos Island, with hurricane-force winds extending up to 30 miles from the center.
Premier Washington Misick urged people to evacuate. “Storms are unpredictable,” he said in a statement from London, where he had attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. “You must therefore take every precaution to ensure your safety.”
Fiona had maximum sustained winds of 115 mph and was moving north-northwest at 8 mph, according to the Hurricane Center, which said the storm was likely to strengthen into a Category 4 hurricane as it approaches Bermuda on Friday.
Rain was still lashing parts of Puerto Rico on Tuesday, where the sounds of people
scraping, sweeping and spraying their homes and streets echoed across rural areas as historic floodwaters began to recede.
In the central mountain town of Cayey, where the Plato River burst its banks and the brown torrent of water consumed cars and homes, overturned dressers, beds and large refrigerators lay strewn in people’s yards on Tuesday.
“Puerto Rico is not prepared for this, or for anything,” said Mariangy Hernandez, a 48-year-old housewife, who said she doubted the government would help her community
of some 300 in the long term, despite ongoing efforts to clear the streets and restore power. “This is only for a couple of days and later they forget about us.”
She and her husband were stuck in line waiting for the National Guard to clear a landslide in their hilly neighborhood.
“Is it open? Is it open?” one driver asked, worried that the road might have been completely closed.
Other drivers asked the National Guard if they could swing by their homes to help cut trees or clear clumps of mud and debris.
The cleanup efforts
occurred on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Maria, which hit as a Category 4 storm in 2017 and knocked out power for a year in parts of Cayey.
Jeannette Soto, a 34-yearold manicurist, worried it would take a long time for crews to restore power because a landslide swept away the neighborhood’s main light post.
“It’s the first time this happens,” she said of the landslides. “We didn’t think the magnitude of the rain was going to be so great.”
Gov. Pedro Pierluisi requested a major disaster declaration on Tuesday
and said it would be at least a week before authorities have an estimate of the damage that Fiona caused.
He said the damage caused by the rain was “catastrophic,” especially in the island’s central, south and southeast regions.
“The impact caused by the hurricane has been devastating for many people,” he said.
The broad storm kept dropping copious rain Tuesday over the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, where a 58-year-old man died after police said he was swept away by a river in the central mountain town of
Comerio.
Parts of the island had received more than 25 inches of rain.
Another death was linked to a power blackout — a 70-year-old man was burned to death after he tried to fill his generator with gasoline while it was running, officials said.
National Guard Brig. Gen. Narciso Cruz described the flooding as historic.
“There were communities that flooded in the storm that didn’t flood under Maria,” he said, referring to the 2017 hurricane that caused nearly 3,000 deaths. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Cruz said 670 people have been rescued in Puerto Rico, including 19 people at a retirement home in Cayey that was in danger of collapsing.
“The rivers broke their banks and blanketed communities,” he said.
Some people were rescued via kayaks and boats while others nestled into the massive shovel of a digger and were lifted to higher ground.
He lamented that some people initially refused to leave their homes, adding that he understood why.
“It’s human nature,” he said. “But when they saw their lives were in danger, they agreed to leave.”
Fiona triggered a blackout when it hit Puerto Rico’s southwest corner Sunday, the anniversary of Hurricane Hugo, which slammed into the island in 1989 as a Category 3 storm.
By Tuesday morning, authorities said they had restored power to more than 300,000 of the island’s 1.47 million customers. Puerto Rico’s governor warned it could take days before everyone has electricity.