Tropical Storm Fiona has strengthened into a hurricane as it bears down on Puerto Rico, where people are braced ready for severe wind and torrential rains.
Forecasters said “historic” levels of rain were expected to produce landslides and heavy flooding, with up to 25 inches (64cm) forecast in isolated areas.
“It’s time to take action and be concerned,” Nino Correa, Puerto Rico’s emergency management commissioner, said.
Fiona was centred 50 miles (80km) southeast of Ponce, Puerto Rico, on Sunday morning. It had maximum sustained winds of 80mph (130kph) and was moving west-northwest at 8mph (13kph).
The hurricane was forecast to pummel cities and towns along Puerto Rico’s southern coast that had not yet fully recovered from a string of strong earthquakes that hit the region starting in late 2019.
More than 100 people had sought shelter across the island by Saturday night, the majority of them in the southern coastal city of Guayanilla.
Anxiety ran high across the island, with Fiona due just two days before the anniversary of Hurricane Maria, a devastating Category 4 storm that hit on September 20 2017, destroying the island’s power grid and causing nearly 3,000 deaths.
“I think all of us Puerto Ricans who lived through Maria have that post-traumatic stress of, ‘What is going to happen, how long is it going to last and what needs might we face?'” said Danny Hernandez, who works in the capital of San Juan but planned to weather the storm with his parents and family in the western town of Mayaguez.
Many Puerto Ricans were also concerned about blackouts.
Luma, the company that operates power transmission and distribution, warned of “widespread service interruptions”.
As of Sunday morning, more than 128,700 customers were without power.
Puerto Rico’s power grid was razed by Hurricane Maria and remains frail, with reconstruction starting only recently. Power cuts are a daily occurrence.
Puerto Rico’s governor, Pedro Pierluisi, said he was ready to declare a state of emergency if needed and activated the National Guard as the Atlantic hurricane season’s sixth named storm approached.
“What worries me most is the rain,” forecaster Ernesto Morales, with the National Weather Service in San Juan, said.
Fiona was predicted to drop 12 to 16 inches (30 to 41cm) of rain over eastern and southern Puerto Rico, with up to 25 inches (64cm) in isolated spots.
The National Weather Service warned late on Saturday that the Blanco River in the southeast coastal town of Naguabo had already burst its banks and urged people living nearby to move immediately.
Fiona was forecast to hit the Dominican Republic on Monday and then northern Haiti and the Turks and Caicos Islands with the threat of heavy rain. It could threaten the far southern end of the Bahamas on Tuesday.
