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Hurricane Fiona catastrophic flooding and landslides in Puerto Rico.
Hurricane Fiona made landfall in the Dominican Republic early Monday after lashing Puerto Rico with heavy rains, life-threatening flooding and an island-wide blackout.
The Category 1 typhoon landed near Boca de Yuma at 3:30 a. m. with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.
As the typhoon slowly moves northwest, it still dumps torrential rains on Puerto Rico, where more than 1. 4 million people are without power.
Authorities said at least one in Puerto Rico had died.
So far, at least one death has been reported in the badly damaged city of Basse-Terre, the capital of the French territory of Guadeloupe, the vice president of the territory’s environmental firm said Sunday.
It made landfall on Puerto Rico’s southwest coast Sunday afternoon, lashing the island with strong winds of up to 75 miles per hour and bringing 6 to 24 inches of rain to some spaces through the end of the day, according to the National Weather Service.
Fiona will continue to affect Puerto Rico and the eastern parts of the Dominican Republic through Monday. The eastern regions of the Dominican Republic can also revel in flooding and landslides and landslides in the upper areas, depending on the center of the hurricane. Fiona can simply bring a total of up to 30 inches of precipitation to Puerto Rico and up to 12 inches east and north of the Dominican Republic.
The hurricane is expected once it passes over the Dominican Republic and moves toward the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Bahamas on Monday and Tuesday, according to the National Hurricane Center. The Turks and Caicos Islands are under hurricane caution and the southern Bahamas is under tropical typhoon watch.
LUMA Energy, Puerto Rico’s main electric utility, said Sunday that it may be just days before power is restored, adding that “several power outages” are contributing to the outage. The procedure will be carried out “gradually,” Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said. he said in a Facebook post.
The online page PowerOutage. us reported that the entire island was without strength early Monday, adding that LUMA had “reactivated some circuits, but the data is limited and there are no figures on the number of consumers who have recovered. “
Power outages have a familiar crisis for many Puerto Ricans. Just five months ago, citizens experienced another island-wide blackout after a fire broke out at a power plant.
Parts of the island still bear the scars of Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico nearly exactly five years ago. After Hurricane Maria inflicted catastrophic damage to the territory’s infrastructure, it took nearly a year to restore strength to the island.
Samuel Rivera and his mother, Lourdes Rodriguez, lived without power for about a year after Maria’s coup, Rivera told CNN’s Layla Santiago. On Sunday morning, they lost steam again, raising fears similar to those they had five years ago.
They said they also feared a nearby river would overflow and that trees surrounding their home would be blown down by the winds.
Life-Threatening Floods Ravage Puerto Rico
When Hurricane Fiona made landfall Sunday, Puerto Rico’s high under a flash flood warning in anticipation of the overwhelming downpour. The National Weather Service in San Juan warned of “catastrophic” and potentially fatal flood conditions.
A video of the damaging flood shows torrential waters gently erasing a bridge, washing its design downstream. Design of cars and whole trees.
Many rivers in the east of the island were in moderate to primary flooding degrees Sunday afternoon, adding a southeast river that grew more than 12 feet in less than 7 hours. On Sunday night, the National Weather Service also issued flash flood warnings in southern parts of central Puerto Rico.
Reacting to the threat facing Puerto Rico, President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration early Sunday to provide federal assistance to crisis relief efforts.
More than three hundred FEMA rescue personnel were on the floor responding to the crisis, the agency’s associate administrator for reaction and recovery, Anne Bink, told CNN.
“Our hearts go out to the citizens who are going through some other catastrophic event five years later,” Bink said, nodding his head on Hurricane Maria’s fifth anniversary. This time, he said, FEMA plans to implement the lessons learned from the 2017 Crises.
“We were much more prepared. We now have 4 warehouses strategically across the island, which come with commodities, exponentially larger materials than in the past,” he said.
“We’re there proactively, and well before any typhoon, to make sure we’re coordinated. And all the plan-making efforts we take on blue-sky days can be used wisely when the rain falls. “
ABC News contributed to this report
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