Maria clobbers Puerto Rico; 100% of island without power, emergency chief says

One of 19 municipal police officers arrives Wednesday at the Emergency Management Agency in Humacao, Puerto Rico, after being removed from a flooded police station by rescuers during Hurricane Maria, which hit the eastern region of the island.
One of 19 municipal police officers arrives Wednesday at the Emergency Management Agency in Humacao, Puerto Rico, after being removed from a flooded police station by rescuers during Hurricane Maria, which hit the eastern region of the island.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Hurricane Maria raked across Puerto Rico on Wednesday as the most powerful storm to strike the island in more than 80 years, ripping roofs off buildings, filling homes with water and knocking out power to the entire population.

"Definitely Puerto Rico -- when we can get outside -- we will find our island destroyed," Puerto Rico's emergency management director Abner Gomez said at a midday news conference, adding that 100 percent of the island is without electricity. "The information we have received is not encouraging. It's a system that has destroyed everything it has had in its path."

As of Wednesday night, the storm had killed at least nine people across the Caribbean.

The storm first slammed the Puerto Rican coast near Yabucoa at 6:15 a.m. Wednesday with 155-mph winds, making it the first Category 4 hurricane to directly strike the island since 1932. By midmorning, Maria had engulfed the 100-mile-long island as winds snapped palm trees, peeled off rooftops and sent debris skidding across beaches and roads. By afternoon, the strong gusts had become less frequent and the lashing rains eased, giving residents their first glimpse of the storm's damage.

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As of 11 p.m. Wednesday, Maria remained a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 110 mph. It was centered about 55 miles off the eastern tip of the Dominican Republic, moving at 9 mph.

It was expected to pass off the northeastern coast of the Dominican Republic late Wednesday and into today.

Gov. Ricardo Rossello imposed a curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. daily until Saturday to allow rescue crews and officials to respond to the hurricane's aftermath.

"We are at a critical moment in the effort to help thousands of Puerto Ricans that urgently need aid and to assess the great damage caused by Hurricane Maria," he said. "Maintaining public order will be essential."

[HURRICANE TRACKER: Follow Maria’s projected path]

Rossello said in an interview on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 that one fatality has been reported but because communications were knocked out in some areas, the total casualty count wasn't known.

The storm unloaded at least 20 inches of rain in some areas, and floodwaters inundated homes, even those far from shore that had never before seen flooding. The emergency room of a hospital in Bayamon was flooded, forcing the staff to move patients to a safer area.

In a community in Catano, 80 percent of the structures were destroyed, Mayor Felix Delgado said. "Months and months and months and months are going to pass before we can recover from this," he said.

People seeking help were told by authorities that they would have to sit tight until conditions improved. Among them were a family in Guayama pleading for help from their home because of water up to the height of their cabinets, and a woman in Hato Rey saying she was experiencing labor pains.

"Unfortunately, our staff cannot leave," Gomez said at the news conference. "They will be rescued later."

Before striking Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria made landfall on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Rep. Stacey Plaskett, who represents the Virgin Islands in the U.S. House, said St. Croix had been a staging ground for relief efforts after Hurricane Irma devastated other parts of her district just days ago. Then Tuesday night, Maria slammed St. Croix directly as a Category 5 storm, with winds of 175 mph, and moved slowly across the island.

The damage has yet to be fully assessed, she said, but in a sign of the possible devastation, the roof of the local racetrack blew into the runway of the airport, complicating relief efforts.

"We're just now getting an assessment from [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] and others," she said Wednesday afternoon. "There's still rain going down there."

Puerto Rico's vulnerability to tropical storms has been driven home in the past two weeks as first Irma and then Maria have howled into the Caribbean. Because of the back-to-back storms, about 3,200 federal government workers, National Guardsmen and other emergency personnel overseen by FEMA were already in Puerto Rico, many of them dealing with the Irma response and recovery.

"Right now we're in wait-and-see mode," FEMA Administrator Brock Long said Wednesday afternoon. "We know that St. Croix took a tremendous hit, and we know obviously Puerto Rico took the brunt of the storm. Once the weather clears and the seas die down, we'll be in full operation."

The federal recovery effort, he said, will attempt to restore power to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands as quickly as possible but in a way that makes the grid less vulnerable to similar disruptions.

The power grid, he said, "is a fragile system in both territories. It's going to be a long and frustrating process to get the power grid up."

Speaking on NBC's Today show Wednesday morning, Rossello said buildings that meet the island's newer construction codes, established around 2011, would be able to weather the winds. But wooden homes in flood-prone areas "have no chance," he said.

MARIA'S POWER

In the capital, San Juan, buildings shook and windows shattered from the force of the storm. Residents of some high-rise apartments sought refuge in bathrooms and first-floor lobbies, but even those who sought out safe ground found themselves vulnerable.

Adriana Rosado and her husband decided to stay in the Ciqala Luxury Suites hotel in San Juan's Miramar neighborhood because it had a generator and would be able to continue electrical service. It seemed like the safest, most comfortable option for their 2-month-old son to have access to electricity, air conditioning and water.

But Rosado, 21, hardly slept Tuesday night, with the howling winds banging against the building's windows. At 4 a.m. Wednesday, Rosado woke to water flowing into the family's sixth-floor hotel room. Shortly after the family left the hotel room, one of its windows was blown out by the storm.

"I just want it to be 10 p.m. so it can all pass and I can call my family," said Rosado, sitting on the hallway carpet on the first floor with her baby, Jorge Nicolas, sleeping on a pillow and blanket beside her. Rosado's neighborhood in Guaynabo, west of San Juan, experienced major flooding Wednesday. She had not heard from her mother since 4 a.m., unable to get cellphone service.

Macarena Gil Gandia, a resident of Hato Rey, a business district in San Juan, helped her mother clean out water that had started flooding the kitchen of her second-floor apartment at dawn Wednesday.

"There are sounds coming from all sides," Gil Gandia said in a text message. "The building is moving! And we're only on the second floor, imagine the rest!"

Parts of Hato Rey were underwater. An electric gate for her building in the neighborhood was blown off, Gil Gandia said.

In the lobby of Ciqala Luxury Suites in San Juan, Maria Gil de Lamadrid waited with her husband in the lobby as the rain and wind pounded on the hotel's facade. The door of the hotel's parking garage flopped violently in the wind. The sounds of the storm were so loud that it was hard for hotel guests to hear each other speak.

Gil de Lamadrid spent Tuesday night in the hotel after evacuating from her nearby 16th-floor waterfront apartment, which has been prone to flooding during previous hurricanes. But even in a luxury hotel room, Gil de Lamadrid could not evade flooding. On Wednesday morning, water began to seep into her hotel room through the balcony doors.

She did not know Wednesday how her apartment building and neighbors were faring the storm. "I'm feeling anxious," she said. But her husband shrugged.

"For me, it's an adventure," the husband said, "something to talk about later."

Puerto Rico was spared the full force of the Category 5 Irma earlier this month. Irma sideswiped the territory Sept. 6, causing no deaths or widespread damage on the island but leaving more than 1 million people without electricity. More than 70,000 people still had no power as Maria approached.

Some residents of Vieques, who had stocked up on critical supplies in advance of Irma, donated what they had left to harder-hit areas such as Tortola and St. Thomas, then had to rush to restock ahead of Maria before deliveries to the island stopped and the power flickered off again.

Even before the storm, Puerto Rico's electrical grid was crumbling, and the island was in dire condition financially.

Puerto Rico is struggling to restructure a portion of its $73 billion debt, and the government has warned that it is running out of money as it fights against furloughs and other austerity measures imposed by a federal board overseeing the island's finances.

Rossello urged people to have faith.

"We are stronger than any hurricane," he said. "Together, we will rebuild."

He asked President Donald Trump to declare the island a disaster zone, a step that would open the way to federal aid.

Late Wednesday night, Trump tweeted: "Governor ricardorossello- We are with you and the people of Puerto Rico. Stay safe! #PRStrong."

Many people feared that extended power failures would further sink businesses struggling amid a recession that has lasted more than a decade.

"This is going to be a disaster," said Jean Robert Auguste, who owns two French restaurants and sought shelter at a San Juan hotel. "We haven't made any money this month."

More than 11,000 people -- and more than 580 pets -- were in shelters, authorities said.

Puerto Rico is vulnerable to hurricanes, but it has been spared over the years. The last hurricane to make landfall was Georges in 1998. Just one Category 5 hurricane has hit Puerto Rico in recorded history, San Felipe in 1928.

Maria posed no immediate threat to the U.S. mainland, though Hurricane Jose was being watched closely for its spillover effect on Maria. It could help in keeping Maria away from the U.S. mainland by drawing it to the northeast. But if Jose weakens too quickly, Maria could drift closer to the U.S. coast by the middle of next week.

The remnants of Jose on Wednesday created pounding surf and 65-mph winds in southern New England. Tropical storm warnings were issued for the coast from Rhode Island to Cape Cod.

Information for this article was contributed by Samantha Schmidt, Sandhya Somashekhar, Daniel Cassady, Amy Gordon, Anthony Faiola, Rachelle Krygier, Brian Murphy, Jason Samenow, Dan Lamothe and Amy B Wang of The Washington Post; and by Danica Coto, Ben Fox and Seth Borenstein of The Associated Press.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES/ERIKA P. RODRIGUEZ

Trees are left mangled outside the GFR Media building as Hurricane Maria sweeps through the area Wednesday in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico.

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AP/CARLOS GIUSTI

Rescue team members embrace as they wait Wednesday to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Humacao, Puerto Rico.

A Section on 09/21/2017

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