September 20, 2017
Hurricane Maria knocks out power to island of Puerto Rico
By Holly Yan, Euan McKirdy and Jaide Timm-Garcia, CNN
San Juan, Puerto Rico (CNN)
Hurricane Maria has weakened to a Category 3 hurricane, the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday afternoon. As of 2 p.m. ET, Maria packed maximum sustained winds of 115 mph.
While the center of Maria has left Puerto Rico, hurricane-force winds still extend over much of the island.
The island of Puerto Rico is completely without electricity, a spokesman from the governor's office said Wednesday. "We are 100% without power," the spokesman said.
Hurricane Maria kept thrashing Puerto Rico on Wednesday, ripping trees out of the ground and hammering two-thirds of the island with hurricane-force winds.
"This is total devastation," said Carlos Mercader, a spokesman for Puerto Rico's governor. "Puerto Rico, in terms of the infrastructure, will not be the same. ... This is something of historic proportions."
Maria killed seven people on the Caribbean island nation of Dominica, said Gaston Browne, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda. Browne said he had been communicating with the Prime Minister of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit, who reported "widespread devastation" and whose own house was shredded by the storm.
Hurricane Maria obliterated homes on the island of Dominica.
Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico on Wednesday near the city of Yabucoa with winds of 155 mph, the National Hurricane Center said. By 11 a.m., those winds had weakened to 140 mph, but Maria was still a Category 4 hurricane capable of ripping roofs off houses.
Maria was expected to dump at least 12 to 18 inches of rain on the island before barreling toward the Dominican Republic starting Wednesday night, then on to Turks and Caicos and the southeastern Bahamas by Thursday night, the National Hurricane Center predicted.
Puerto Rican Olympic gymnast Tommy Ramos, who's riding out the storm in the northern city of Vega Baja, posted video of gusts blowing debris in front of him.
"The house is steady," Ramos told CNN. "What scares us is the flooding."
Holed up in the Puerto Rican capital of San Juan, Geffrard Dejoie said his hotel already was deluged by midmorning Wednesday.
"We are all sheltered in the hallways, as a few windows in some rooms have broken," said Dejoie, a traveling tennis coach. "We also are located very close to the lagoon, and the water is coming up on the lobby, so we had to move to higher floors."
Virgin Islands and Dominican Republic under the gun
Beyond Puerto Rico, a hurricane warning was in effect for the British and US Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, the southeastern Bahamas and the Dominican Republic from Cabo Engano to Puerto Plata, the hurricane center said.
At 11 a.m. ET Wednesday, Maria was centered about 25 miles west of San Juan. It was heading northwest at 12 mph.
Dangerous storm surges "accompanied by large and destructive waves" will raise water levels 10 to 15 feet above normal tide levels in the hurricane warning areas of the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos, the hurricane center said.
And the British and US Virgin Islands could get pummeled with at least 5 to 10 inches of rain.
'First responders cannot go out there'
The hurricane slammed Puerto Rico with such intensity, it broke two National Weather Service radars on the island.
Calls for rescue immediately started pouring in -- but to no avail.
"First responders cannot go out there," Mercader said, echoing the governor's earlier warning that emergency crews wouldn't go outside in winds stronger than 50 mph.
Maria was expected to cause widespread power outages across Puerto Rico. Shortly after landfall, the storm had wiped out power in the east coast city of Fajardo.
Maria became the first hurricane of Category 4 strength or higher in 85 years to hit the US territory, home to 3.3 million people.
Escaping the storm
Thousands of Puerto Ricans heeded calls to go to emergency shelters. "As of 2:30 a.m. we count 10,059 refugees and 189 pets (in shelters)," the island's governor, Ricardo Rosselló, tweeted.
After the storm made landfall, Rosselló asked US President Donald Trump to declare Puerto Rico a disaster zone, the governor tweeted.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/20/americas/hurricane-maria-caribbean-islands/index.html
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