San Juan (September 21, 2017): Hurricane Maria’s eye has left Puerto Rico, but the mammoth storm is still lashing the island with devastating winds.
Maria weakened to a Category 2 hurricane Wednesday afternoon, with winds of 110 mph. But hurricane-force gusts topping 74 mph still extend over much of Puerto Rico, the National Hurricane Center said.
Maria’s brute force wiped out electricity to the entire island. “We are 100% without power,” a spokesman for the Puerto Rico governor’s office said Wednesday.
The storm also ripped trees out of the ground and caused widespread flooding. “This is total devastation,” said Carlos Mercader, a spokesman for Puerto Rico’s governor. “Puerto Rico, in terms of the infrastructure, will not be the same. … This is something of historic proportions.”
A nightly curfew from 6 pm to 6 am will take effect Wednesday evening and end Saturday morning, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello announced.
Maria has already killed seven people on the Caribbean island nation of Dominica, said Gaston Browne, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda.
Browne said he had been communicating with the Prime Minister of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit, who reported “widespread devastation” and whose own house was shredded by the storm.
Maria is expected to dump a total of 12 to 18 inches of rain on Puerto Rico before barreling toward the Dominican Republic.
US Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft said the damage to St. Croix is especially alarming.
“First priority is going to be saving of lives — not just in Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands — I’m especially concerned with St. Croix, that was also in the path of Hurricane Maria when it was a Category 5 hurricane,” Zukunft said Wednesday.
The landscape has been stripped bare. Thousands of trees have been snapped at their base and those still standing devoid of leaves. Dominica was a lush green landscape, including rainforests, but now is brown and lifeless.
Dangerous storm surges “accompanied by large and destructive waves” will raise water levels 10 to 15 feet above normal tide levels in the hurricane warning areas of the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos, the hurricane center said. The islands could also see as much as 20 inches of rain.
Maria became the first hurricane of Category 4 strength or higher in 85 years to make a direct landfall on Puerto Rico, home to 3.3 million people.
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