Puerto Rico without power as Hurricane Fiona makes landfall: NPR

Nelson Sereno secures the windows of his home as Hurricane Fiona’s winds blow in Luisa, Puerto Rico, on Sunday.

Alejandro Granadillo/AFP

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Alejandro Granadillo/AFP

Nelson Sereno secures the windows of his home as Hurricane Fiona’s winds blow in Luisa, Puerto Rico, on Sunday.

Alejandro Granadillo/AFP

Hurricane Fiona made landfall in southwest Puerto Rico on Sunday afternoon, as the entire island continues to stumble from the fatal blow to its power grid.

The Category 1 hurricane was expected to cause serious landslides and torrential flooding on an island already battered by a storm.

As of Sunday afternoon, the storm was centered 15 miles south of Mayaguez, an area on Puerto Rico’s west coast, according to the National Hurricane Center. The maximum sustained winds were 85 mph and were moving northwest at 9 mph.

Fiona is expected to cause 12 to 16 inches of rain in Puerto Rico but up to 25 inches across the island’s eastern and southern regions.

More than 1,400,000 customers lost electricity due to transmission network disruptions from the current hurricane, according to utility company reports tracked by PowerOutage.US.

Luma Energy, the island’s own electric company, says the full restoration of Puerto Rico’s power service “could take several days.”

Governor Pedro Berluisi wrote on Facebook The Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority and Luma Energy responders are “active and ready to respond to the situation as soon as conditions permit.”

The storm will move towards the Dominican Republic by Monday

The National Hurricane Center expects Fiona to remain around Puerto Rico through Sunday evening and head toward the Dominican Republic by Monday. She is scheduled to travel to the east of the Turks and Caicos Islands on Tuesday.

Flash flooding is likely to be “life-threatening and catastrophic” across Puerto Rico and eastern Dominican Republic, according to storm-monitoring officials. The combination of storm surge and tides can cause water levels to rise up to three feet on the island’s southern coast.

So far, Fiona has wreaked havoc in the eastern Caribbean, damaged roads, destroyed property and killed a person in the French province of Guadeloupe, Sylvie Gustave de Duflo, district official, wrote in Twitter.

The storm is also expected to be devastating to parts of the Dominican Republic, northern Haiti and the southern tip of the Bahamas in the coming days.

A fragile power grid makes matters worse

It wasn’t long ago when Hurricane Maria devastated the island’s power grid – a Category 4 storm that caused about 3,000 deaths in 2017. It destroyed more than 80% of the transmission and distribution system and the recovery process was slow.

As a result, blackouts have been an ongoing problem on the island.

Leomar Rodríguez González, of Utuado, a town in central Puerto Rico, told NPR that he and his family were worried because the scenes of torrential floods and landslides reminded them of Hurricane Maria.

“I worry about a lot of things but right now, the floods are worrying me,” he said.

Rodriguez Gonzalez said that Maria destroyed his family’s home and business. That is why they were preparing for the storm for several days: they stocked up on canned food, bought extra batteries and cut trees near electric poles.

President Biden agreed Sunday’s declaration of emergency for Puerto Rico, which authorizes the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief efforts.