Hurricane Fiona targets Turks and Caicos after leaving 1 million without running

Fiona, having strengthened early Tuesday to a major hurricane — a Category 3 with sustained winds of more than 111 mph — was centered just off Grand Turk Island around 8 a.m. ET. Its heavy rains were threatening “life-threatening flooding” through the afternoon in the Turks and Caicos, a British territory of about 38,000 people, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.

Still dealing with Fiona’s ruinous path are the Dominican Republic — where Fiona’s outer bands still could cause flooding after it traversed the Caribbean nation Monday — and Puerto Rico, which Fiona crossed a day earlier, causing a near blackout and leaving damage not seen there since Hurricane Maria made landfall five years ago Tuesday, officials said.

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 impacted by the outages.

Fiona strengthens as it pushes north

This is the first major hurricane — Category 3 or higher — of this year’s Atlantic hurricane season.

Those islands could see 4 to 8 inches of rain Tuesday on top of what they received earlier, as well as storm surges — ocean water pushed onto land — of 5 to 8 feet, according to the hurricane center.

Hurricane conditions will likely be seen in Turks and Caicos through Tuesday morning, and tropical storm conditions — winds of at least 39 mph — were expected to spread over the southeastern Banahamas on Tuesday morning.