Hurricane Fiona reaches Category 4 as it moves north, leaving disaster-stricken
Water is the top concern for residents like Carlos Vega, whose town of Cayey in the mountains of east-central Puerto Rico faced not only utility outages but also partially collapsed roads — an effect of the major flooding and more than 2 feet of rain that parts of Puerto Rico were hit with.
“(Being without) power … we can face that and we can deal with that. The biggest concern is with our water. Can’t live without water,” Vega told CNN on Tuesday.
Fiona also whipped parts of the Turks and Caicos islands on Tuesday with sustained winds of almost 125 mph, officials said. That left many areas without power, including on Grand Turk, South Caicos, Salt Cay, North Caicos and Middle Caicos, said Anya Williams, the acting governor of the islands. Authorities were able to begin visiting several islands and begin repairs.
No deaths had been reported in Turks and Caicos as of Wednesday evening, Williams said in an update.
Fiona’s flooding especially left critical infrastructure damage in Puerto Rico and then the Dominican Republic, which the storm crossed Monday. More than 1 million utility customers in the Dominican Republic had no water service as of Wednesday morning, and more than 349,000 customers were without power, according to Maj. Gen. Juan Méndez García, director of the country’s emergency operations center.
Meanwhile, parts of Puerto Rico, where hundreds of thousands remained without power, reached heat indices — what the air feels like when combining temperature and humidity — of 105 to 109 degrees Wednesday, according to CNN meteorologist Rob Shackelford.
Storm presses north and could threaten Bermuda and Atlantic Canada
“Fiona is forecast to be a hurricane-force cyclone through Saturday,” the hurricane center said.
Though the storm isn’t expected to track near the US East Coast, it could generate onshore waves of 8 to 10 feet there over the weekend, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said…
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