Fionathe first major hurricane of the season in the Atlantic, continued its devastating northward course on Wednesday, heading towards the Bermuda archipelago after raging in the Caribbean, where it caused the death of at least five people.
The hurricane was rated Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson scale of 5 by the National Hurricane Center (NHC), based in Miami.
” Fiona will approach Bermuda late Thursday,” the NHC said, adding that the hurricane, accompanied by sustained winds of up to 210 kilometers per hour, was Wednesday morning 170 km north of the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Fionathen a tropical storm, formed in mid-September in the central Atlantic and caused death and destruction as it passed through the Caribbean.
A man died in Guadeloupe, washed away with his house by the waves of a flooded river. Two people died in the Dominican Republic and two others in Puerto Rico.
In the Turks and Caicos Islands, no casualties have been reported, the territory’s Deputy Governor Anya Williams said, calling on residents to continue to shelter in place.
The British Navy and US Coastguard stand ready to provide assistance, she said.
Water and power cuts
Many of the approximately 38,000 residents of this British Overseas Territory suffered power cuts.
Fiona had previously affected the Dominican Republic and its approximately 11 million inhabitants. President Luis Abinader has declared a state of natural disaster in three provinces in the east – La Altagracia where the resort town of Punta Cana is located, El Seibo and Hato Mayor.
Authorities said on Tuesday that more than 10,000 people have been displaced. Some 400,000 people are without electricity and 1.2 million without water.
Local media footage showed residents of Higuey on the east coast reaching for belongings, waist deep in water.
Several roads were flooded or cut off around Punta Cana by falling trees or electric poles and the power supply was interrupted, according to AFP journalists. “It came at full speed,” Vicente Lopez told AFP, lamenting the damage to businesses.
In Puerto Rico, a US territory still recovering from the hurricane maria five years ago, Fiona caused landslides, downed trees and power lines, made roads impassable and washed away a bridge in the town of Utuado.
“A lot of people are suffering right now”
US President Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, attended by the head of the US Disaster Management Agency (FEMA), Deanne Criswell.
“We are sending hundreds of additional personnel,” said Deanne Criswell on Tuesday after a tour of the island, accompanied by Governor Pedro Pierluisi.
Michelle Carlo, medical adviser for the humanitarian organization Direct Relief in Puerto Rico, told CBS News television that “a lot of people in Puerto Rico are suffering right now.”
“About 80% of Puerto Ricans are still without electricity and some 65% without water,” she added.
The hurricane caused “catastrophic” damage on this island of three million inhabitants, Pierluisi said on Sunday. According to the authorities, nearly 800,000 people remain deprived of drinking water.
The Puerto Rican agricultural sector has been devastated, according to the president of a farmers’ association, Hector Cordero, who said in a radio interview on Tuesday that banana, vegetable and coffee crops had been hit hard.
“Agriculture has basically disappeared”, washed away by the deluge, he said.
The entire territory of Puerto Rico, which has more than three million inhabitants, had been without electricity as the hurricane approached.
Power has so far only been restored to just under 300,000 customers of utility LUMA, but the governor said on Tuesday he expects “a large part of the island” to have power. new access to electricity in the evening or on Wednesday.