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Hurricane Fiona is continuing its ruinous path Tuesday after devastating Puerto Rico with flooding rain then ripping through the Dominican Republic, where more than a million people were left without running water and dozens of homes were destroyed.
Nearly 800 people were brought to safety by emergency workers in the Dominican Republic, according to the country’s emergency management director of operations, Juan Manuel Mendez. At least 519 people were taking refuge in the country’s 29 shelters Monday, he said.
The eye of the hurricane slammed into the nation early Monday, battering communities with maximum sustained winds of 90 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center said. That’s after the storm wreaked havoc across Puerto Rico Sunday and into Monday, leaving the US territory in a blackout and bringing destruction not seen on the island since Hurricane Maria in 2017, officials said.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
Alejandro Granadillo/AP
Streets are flooded on Salinas Beach after Hurricane Fiona moved through Salinas, Puerto Rico, Monday, September 19.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters
Children play in a flooded street in the aftermath of Fiona in Salinas Monday.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
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A man looks at a flooded street in the Juana Matos neighborhood of Cataño, Puerto Rico.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters
A member of the Puerto Rico National Guard searches for people to rescue in Salinas.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters
Members of the Puerto Rico National Guard rescue a woman stranded in her house in Salinas.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
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A woman stands outside her flooded house in Salinas.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters
A man walks past a Puerto Rican flag painted on a door in the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona in Peñuelas.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
Stephanie Rojas/AP
Residents affected by Hurricane Fiona rest at a storm shelter in Salinas.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
Alejandro Granadillo/AP
A woman clears debris on her flooded property in Salinas.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
Alejandro Granadillo/AP
Nelson Cirino looks at his bedroom after the winds of Hurricane Fiona tore the roof off his house in Loíza, Puerto Rico, Sunday.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters
People clear a road from a fallen tree in Yauco, Puerto Rico, Sunday.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
Alejandro Granadillo/AP
Nelson Cirino secures the windows of his home as the winds of Hurricane Fiona blow in Loíza.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
NOAA/AP
This satellite image provided by NOAA shows Hurricane Fiona in the Caribbean Sunday.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
Ricardo Rojas/Reuters
Workers of the Social State Plan prepare food rations in preparation for Fiona in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on Sunday.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
Alejandro Granadillo/AP
Jetsabel Osorio stands in her house damaged five years ago by Hurricane Maria in Loíza on Saturday.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
Alejandro Granadillo/AP
Residents attach protective plywood to a window of their home in preparation for the arrival of Fiona in Loíza Saturday.
Photos: Hurricane Fiona slams the Caribbean
Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters
Boats sit secured to mangroves as Fiona approaches in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, Saturday.
At least three people have died in the severe weather, including one in the French territory of Guadeloupe and two in Puerto Rico, according to officials.
In Puerto Rico, a 58-year-old man was swept away by a swollen river behind his home in Comerío and another man in his 30s died in a fire accident that occurred while he was trying to put gasoline in his generator while it was turned on, officials said.
As of Monday afternoon, at least 1,018,564 customers across the Dominican Republic had no access to running water as 59 aqueducts were out of service and several others were only partially functioning, according to Jose Luis German Mejia, a national emergency management official.
Some were also without electricity Monday as 10 electric circuits went offline, emergency management officials said. It’s unclear how many people are affected by the outages.
Heavy rainfall continued to soak eastern regions of the Dominican Republic Monday evening and life-threatening flooding is expected to continue into Tuesday.
Fiona intensified into a Category 3 storm as it moved away from the Dominican Republic’s northern coast early Tuesday with sustained winds whipped up to 115 miles per hour with gusts as strong as 130 miles per hour, according to the hurricane center.
The designation now classifies Fiona as a major hurricane, the first of the Atlantic season.
But the most powerful stages of the storm may be yet to come, as Fiona is expected to escalate into as high as Category 4 by the time it is expected to pass near or to the west of Bermuda on Thursday night.
The storm’s center will likely continue to push northward, moving near or to the east of Turks and Caicos on Tuesday, according to the forecast.
Hurricane conditions will likely be seen in Turks and Caicos Tuesday and by late Monday or early Tuesday the Bahamas are anticipated to be under tropical storm conditions, the hurricane center said.
Even as a tropical storm warning was lifted over Puerto Rico, the island continued to be lashed by the hurricane’s outer bands, soaking regions already struggling under dangerous flooding and destruction.
As Tuesday marks the 5-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria’s catastrophic landfall, some who lived through the 2017 crisis say Fiona’s flooding destruction could be even more severe.
Juan Miguel Gonzalez, a business owner in Puerto Rico told CNN that his neighborhood had still not finished its recovery from Maria when Fiona struck. But this time, he says, the flooding brought even deeper damage to their homes.
“A lot of people – more than (during) Maria – lost their houses now … lost everything in their houses because of the flooding,” Gonzalez told CNN’s Leyla Santiago. “Maria was tough winds. But this one, with all the rain, it just destroyed everything in the house.”
Most of the damage inflicted on the island is rain-related, Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi told CNN Monday evening.
More than 1.2 million customers are still in the dark as of early Tuesday, according to estimates from PowerOutage.us, which notes updated information on restoration efforts is limited.
Pierluisi said he hopes it will be “a matter of days” to restore power for most customers. The company that oversees the territory’s power grid, LUMA Energy, previously said transmission line outages were contributing to the blackout, and on Monday said it had restored power to over 100,000 customers.
Critically, power was restored to one of Puerto Rico’s most vital medical facilities on Monday, according to the territory’s health secretary Dr. Carlos Mellado López.
“The power system at all the hospitals in the Medical Center Complex has been restored,” Mellado said in a Sunday night tweet. “Our patients are safe and receiving the medical care they need.”
Many of those without power also have no water, as rain and flooding impacts to filtration systems left only about 35% of customers with water service as of Monday, the governor said.
Emergency crews battled against unrelenting rain to rescue approximately 1,000 people as of midday Monday, said Maj. Gen. José Reyes, adjutant general of the Puerto Rico National Guard.
In addition to hundreds of Puerto Rican National Guard members assisting in rescue and recovery efforts, the White House said Monday that President Joe Biden told Pierluisi during a phone call that federal support will increase in the coming days.
“As damage assessments are conducted, the President said that the number of support personnel will increase substantially,” the White House said.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul also announced that the state would send 100 state troopers to assist relief efforts in Puerto Rico. She also said teams from the New York Power Authority are available to help with power restoration.
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