Topline
Some 960,000 customers were still without power in Puerto Rico Thursday morning, according to poweroutage.us, four days after Hurricane Fiona made landfall on the island, killing at least four people almost exactly five years after the deadly Hurricane Maria decimated the island.
A flooded street is seen after the passage of Hurricane Fiona in Salinas, Puerto Rico.
Key Facts
About 455,000 households in Puerto Rico were still without access to water as of Wednesday night, according to the government.
At least seven people across the Caribbean have died from the storm: One person died in the French territory of Guadeloupe, two in the Dominican Republic and four in Puerto Rico, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
As many as eight people may have been killed in Puerto Rico, including an ill four-month old child whose mother had difficulty getting to the hospital, Dr. Maria Conte Miller, director of the Institute of Forensic Sciences, said Tuesday, according to Reuters.
Fiona intensified to a Category 4 storm as it moved north past Puerto Rico and after battering the Dominican Republic as well as parts of the Turks and Caicos.
Power in Puerto Rico had been restored to 376,000 customers as of Wednesday out of about 1.5 million households, according to the power company LUMA.
Big Number
More than a million. That’s how many customers in the Dominican Republic were without running water as of Wednesday, while nearly 350,000 were without power, Juan Méndez García, director of the country’s emergency operations center said, according to CNN. Fiona made landfall there Monday.
What To Watch For
Fiona’s center is projected to pass just to the west of Bermuda Thursday night, with hurricane conditions expected on the island. The storm is then projected to approach Nova Scotia on Friday, where it will begin to weaken, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Key Background
Hurricane Fiona has caused heavy damage to several islands in the Caribbean, including “catastrophic” damage in Puerto Rico, the governor said this week, five years after the island’s power grid was decimated by Hurricane Maria, which killed nearly 3,000 people on the island. The storm also came as residents were growing frustrated with LUMA, the private company contracted by the Puerto Rican government in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria to help fix the power grid and take over power transmission. Residents have protested the company and asked the government to terminate LUMA’s contract on several occasions, arguing power outages have worsened since the transition to the company, with many re-upping their calls in light of the power disruptions caused by Fiona. The storm was the first hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. this year during an uncharacteristically quiet Atlantic storm season, despite previous forecasts for an intense year.
Further Reading
Hurricane Fiona Intensifies to Category 4 Storm and Is Blamed for at Least Six Deaths (Wall Street Journal)
Hurricane Fiona heads to Bermuda, up to 8 dead in Puerto Rico (Reuters)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/madelinehalpert/2022/09/22/nearly-1-million-still-without-power-in-puerto-rico-after-fiona-kills-7/