Hurricane Maria came rushing ashore Wednesday as the strongest storm to strike Puerto Rico in more than 80 years, knocking out power to nearly the entire island and leaving frightened people huddled in buildings hoping to ride out withstand powerhouse winds that have already left death and devastation across the Caribbean.
Thousands of Puerto Ricans hunkered down in shelters as Maria packing sustained winds of 155 mph made landfall near Yabucoa, according to the US National Hurricane Centre.
Gov. Ricardo Rossello had earlier warned residents to brace for the “the worst storm of the last century”. In a tweet that more than 11,000 people had sought refuge in about 500 shelters with 200 pets in tow.
CNN reported that Conditions were expected to deteriorate between 8 and 9 a.m. Wednesday when the eye wall hits the eastern coast of the island.
“I’m not denying I’m scared,” an eye-witness who experienced Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and Georges in 1998., Noemi Aviles Rivera, a 47-year-old schoolteacher said “I feel worried because it’s the first time I’ll see a hurricane of this magnitude.”
Maria’s fury was clear from its first brush with land. In a breathless series of Facebook posts late Monday, the prime minister of the island nation of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit, described furious winds that tore off the roof of his official residence. “My roof is gone. I am at the complete mercy of the hurricane. House is flooding,” he wrote.
“This is going to be an extremely violent phenomenon,” Rosselló told the Associated Press as Maria approached. “We have not experienced an event of this magnitude in our modern history.”
Before dawn, Maria’s maximum sustained winds of 150 mph were down slightly from late Tuesday. But that meant little for Maria’s ability to threaten anything in its path.
“Maria is an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane and it should maintain this intensity until landfall,” the Hurricane Centre said.
The Hurricane Centre warned that the rain possibly exceeding 25 inches in some places may “prompt numerous evacuations and rescues” and “enter numerous structures within multiple communities,” adding that streets and parking lots may “become rivers of raging water” and warning some structures will become “uninhabitable or washed away.”
Along the coast, the Weather Service described “extensive impacts” from a “life-threatening” storm surge at the coast, reaching 6 to 9 feet above normally dry land.
Puerto Rico is very vulnerable to hurricanes, but it has been lucky as well. The last hurricane to make landfall was Georges in 1998. Just one Category 5 hurricane has hit Puerto Rico in recorded history, back in 1928.
To the north, the remnants of Hurricane Jose brought pounding surf and 65 mph winds to southern New England. Tropical storm warnings were issued for the coast from Rhode Island to Cape Cod.
Hurricane Irma left many here without power for days. In an unfortunate twist, some residents of Vieques had stocked up on critical supplies in advance of Irma only to donate what they had left to harder-hit areas such as Tortola and St. Thomas. Residents rushed to restock before deliveries to the island stopped and the power flickered off yet again.
President Trump on Sunday declared emergencies in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico in advance of Maria.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has embedded workers across the U.S. territories in the Caribbean, including in parts of the U.S. Virgin Islands affected by Irma, to ensure residents have food and water before the storm.
MSN NEWS/NEWYORK POST