More than a million people in Puerto Rico are without electricity on Wednesday—and many lack phone service or running water—after Hurricane Fiona battered the archipelago this week with 100 mph-plus winds and heavy rain that have so far left at least two dead, a number that could rise further, according to officials.
The National Weather Service says the Category 4 storm, which overwhelmed parts of the island with up to 32 inches of rain, is headed northward toward Bermuda and parallel to the United States. Before veering off the island, the hurricane’s heavy winds and catastrophic rain caused massive flooding and mudslides, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said on Wednesday.
Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi on Wednesday said that he hopes “a large part” of the island will regain power by the end of the evening. Since Tuesday, LUMA Energy announced it has restored power to about 95,000 residents—meaning only about 27 percent of the island has power, with nearly 1.1 million Puerto Ricans in the dark. According to Bayamón Mayor Ramon Luis Rivera, most of his city is without electricity, including four hospitals. Jose González, the mayor of Juaya, told El Nuevo Día on Wednesday that his city has not yet received “tank trucks” of relief supplies and that at least 100 homes are devastated after floods and landslides.
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“In the south of Puerto Rico, there is significant damage to the power grid,” Pierluisi said. “In those towns it will take time. I want a large part of the subscribers throughout the island to have their service today.”
A cellphone for Pierluisi was out of service when The Daily Beast tried to reach him for comment on Wednesday.
The ongoing devastation in Puerto Rico—which has still not yet recovered from Hurricane Maria five years ago—has prompted the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Wednesday to declare a public health emergency on the island. The declaration comes after Biden issued a disaster declaration that authorized FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate relief efforts.
A White House spokesman pointed The Daily Beast to official updates from FEMA and the EPA, detailing their work in Puerto Rico. The EPA’s initial task is to assist the Army Corps of Engineers with shoring up infrastructure for drinking water and wastewater, the agency said in a news release. FEMA staff and support workers are focused on getting “impacted community lifelines” back up and running—that is, power, communications, and water systems, according to a separate release.
“I do anticipate that I will have communication with the president of the United States in the coming days. That is being planned,” Pierluisi said Wednesday, adding that damage assessments have already begun on the island.
HHS sent a 15-person “Health and Medical Task Force” to Puerto Rico, along with a 10-strong “incident management team,” the agency announced. They will work alongside other emergency responders “to determine what, if any, additional federal public health and medical resources can be brought to bear to aid the territory in responding to the hurricane.”
Several Puerto Rican residents and their families have taken to social media to expose the devastation on the ground. One GoFundMe page described how a pregnant woman and her husband lost their home from the flooding and mudslides—as well as many of the items they had purchased in anticipation for their daughter. Another woman started an online campaign for her aunt after her “entire home flooded.” The funds, she said, would be used to help her elderly aunt fix her “home to make it livable.”
“I don’t have words to describe what I experienced during and after the hurricane. It still feels like a nightmare..But it is real,” an artist who lives near Rio Hondo said in a Facebook video on Tuesday, adding that while her house is still intact it suffered major flooding and several of her art pieces were destroyed. “Many Puerto Ricans have lost their houses and everything they possessed.”
Puerto Rico’s present troubles are a product of “a perfect storm of ill will, decrepit infrastructure, red tape and official ineptitude,” according to The Washington Post editorial board, which said the treacherous combination “had enfeebled the island’s defenses and left it ripe for a knockout blow.”
Maria, which struck Puerto Rico exactly five years ago this week, left nearly 3,000 dead. The storm also demolished the U.S. territory’s already-enfeebled power grid, which was still in the process of being rebuilt when Fiona roared through. And while Fiona seems to have killed far fewer people than Maria, the compounding effect is making things even worse for those on the ground.
“In many areas that had never seen flooding, there has been an unprecedented accumulation of water,” Pierluisi said at a press conference on Monday. “In fact, in many areas it was greater than what we saw during Hurricane Maria.”
At least two people in Puerto Rico died due to Fiona, according to FEMA. That number could in fact be as high as eight, according to Maria Conte Miller, director of the Institute of Forensic Sciences, as officials continue to assess the damage. , In one instance, a 70-year-old man was burned to death when he poured gasoline into a generator while it was running, according to the Associated Press. In a second, a 58-year-old man died after being swept away by a river swollen from extreme rains.
In the neighboring Dominican Republic, two people were reported dead from Fiona’s ferocious intensity. One, a 58-year-old man, was killed when a tree fell on him. The other, an 18-year-old girl, was fatally struck by an electrical pole after it was knocked down by severe winds.
Paige Storti, an independent documentary filmmaker, told The Daily Beast she has several friends in the Dominican Republic who have lost their homes due to the hurricane. She said one of her friend’s family homes in Punta Cana “collapsed on one side…and they were already barely getting by.”
“My other friend's family is in Samaná where the heart of the storm was and their house also collapsed on one side so I am trying to help his family as well,” Storti said, noting she has set up a GoFundMe page to help rebuild their lives. “It’s awful how they live despite the hurricane but with the damage that’s caused on top of it all is devastating.”
Despite the devastation, Storti said, her friends have stressed to her they are “just grateful to be safe and healthy.”
Maria moved faster than Fiona and was more spread out, with even stronger winds and heavier rainfall, experts said. Former FEMA administrator W. Craig Fugate told The Washington Post that damage from Fiona is extensive but much more concentrated.
“There were communities that flooded in the storm that didn’t flood under Maria,” National Guard Brig. Gen. Narciso Cruz told the AP. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Cruz told the wire service that emergency crews have used kayaks, construction equipment, and other methods to rescue hundreds of people—among them 19 people at a retirement home that was teetering on the brink of collapse. Others at first didn’t want to leave their residences, but eventually gave in “when they saw their lives were in danger,” Cruz said.
For some, the arrival of Fiona meant seeing their progress in rebuilding after Maria rendered nearly moot.
While clearing mud from her nutrition store, owner Christy Torres Melendez told NPR, “After Hurricane Maria, no one really wanted this building. It was absolutely destroyed. I got it and I was still fixing it up when Hurricane Fiona arrived. But you see what happened.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Tuesday said he had asked the federal government to cover 100 percent of Puerto Rico’s disaster response costs, instead of the customary 75 percent that had been authorized.
“Five years to the day after the arrival of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico needs help to recover from Hurricane Fiona,” Schumer said in a statement released by his office. “We need to make sure this time, Puerto Rico has absolutely everything it needs, as soon as possible, for as long as they need it.”
Speaking to Reuters, lawyer Ramon Luis Nieves, whose San Juan condo had lost power, said, “We had a horrible experience in the aftermath of Maria. They promised it would be better. It hasn’t [been].”
Although the worst of the storm has passed, Puerto Ricans continue to face perilous times ahead.
“Due to continuous days of rainfall from Hurricane Fiona, risks of mud, rock and landslides persist across Puerto Rico,” FEMA said in a statement on Wednesday. “Additionally, an excessive heat advisory is in effect for the island for the next couple of days.”
