As Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico Wednesday, people took shelter at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan.
Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images
Updated at 12:15 p.m. ET
Puerto Rico is
trying to start the process of recovering from Hurricane Maria — and
it's doing so after the powerful storm blew homes apart, filled roads
with water and tore at its infrastructure. Flash floods are persisting,
and the island has no electricity service.
"We are without
power, the whole island is without power," Jenniffer González-Colón,
Puerto Rico's resident commissioner — its representative in Congress —
told Morning Edition on Thursday. González-Colón spoke from Carolina, near San Juan.
Maria
is currently passing north of the Dominican Republic — as midday neared
on Thursday, its eye was 105 miles east-northeast of Puerto Plata and
it was moving toward the northwest at 9 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. Maria's maximum sustained winds of 115 mph make it a Category 3 hurricane.
The
shutdown of Puerto Rico's electrical grid has meant big changes for
students like Miguel Santiago, who attends the University of Puerto Rico
and works at WRTU, the NPR member station there.
Santiago
tells NPR's Adhiti Bandlamudi, "We've never gone through this, you
know? We've never gone through so much time — at least my generation has
never gone through so much time without electricity. So ... going
through my mind, it's a new life."
Other challenges, Santiago says, range from living under a
nightly curfew to getting around debris and wreckage from the storm
that struck as a Category 4 hurricane.
On the sidewalks, he
says, "every three steps you take, there's another tree on the floor.
And not just branches, but trees as a whole. You know, their roots are
intact. They fell off completely. It's really hard to walk around it."
In
many places, Maria ruined repairs that had only just been completed
after the island was hit with a glancing blow from the massively
powerful Hurricane Irma. Puerto Rico is home to 3.4 million people; Maria is the strongest storm to hit there in decades.
NPR's Greg Allen reported on the storm's effects for our Newscast unit:
"Maria dropped a record 35
inches of rain in some places. Rivers across the island are out of their
banks. Authorities opened the floodgates on reservoirs making flooding
worse in some downstream communities. In Levittown, west of San Juan,
flooding forced residents to their rooftops where they awaited rescue.
"In
the city of Las Piedras, officials say they recorded wind gusts over
200 miles per hour. Maria's high winds took roofs, destroyed homes and
snapped concrete power poles in two."
Electricity poles and power lines toppled by Hurricane
Maria are seen in Humacao, Puerto Rico, Wednesday. The storm left the
island without electricity service, officials say.
Carlos Giusti/AP
As the storm's intense winds and high storm surge wreaked havoc on
Puerto Rico yesterday, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz called for help
from the mainland U.S., saying, "The Puerto Rico and San Juan we knew
yesterday is no longer there."
Speaking to González-Colón on Thursday, NPR's David Greene asked for her impression.
"It
is that bad," she said. "I mean, there is devastation. People with
wooden houses are no longer there. And all of the forests and palm trees
— they're not there. It's bare soil. It is devastating, and I hope we
can recover soon."
President Trump declared major disasters
Wednesday night in both Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which
were hit by Maria on its way west.
Hurricane Maria is predicted to make a turn more to the
north in the coming days, as seen in this National Hurricane Center
forecast from 11 a.m. ET.
National Hurricane Center
Dangerous winds persisted last night, González-Colón says: "It was
a long day last night, because the hurricane winds which began at 1
a.m. [continued ] until midnight."
Coordinating relief and recovery efforts will also be a challenge: Gov. Ricardo Rosselló told CNN late Wednesday, "Our telecommunications system is partially down."
Maria's
path put most of the Dominican mercifully outside the storm's 60-mile
extension of hurricane-force winds, but heavy rains and tropical-storm
conditions are hitting the island. Still, parts of the Dominican
Republic can expect to see a dangerous storm surge and large waves, with
water levels 4 to 6 feet above normal tide, the hurricane center said.
After
expending huge amounts of energy to destroy parts of Puerto Rico, the
storm picked up more power when it moved back over water.
Maria
is expected to intensify further, with the hurricane center predicting
winds of 125 mph within 24 hours. The next areas that lie in the storm's
path are part of the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeastern
Bahamas — both areas that can expect to see tropical storm conditions
later today, and hurricane conditions tonight.
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