Hurricane Fiona's toll in Puerto Rico has slowly begun to emerge. Flooding destroyed homes, bridges and roads.
half a decade later. On Sunday, President Biden issued an emergency disaster declaration, and Puerto Rico officials on Tuesday said they expected Biden to upgrade it to a major disaster declaration, which would unlock more federal resources for response and recovery.
By Tuesday afternoon, power had been restored to nearly 1 in 5 households and businesses in Puerto Rico, according to Luma Energy, the private company that manages electrical transmission on the island. Some 1.2 million customers were still without power, relying on generators or left in the dark.In any emergency response, power restoration is key, said W. Craig Fugate, FEMA’s administrator during the Obama administration.
It is still too early to judge the intergovernmental response to Fiona, Fugate said, but FEMA appeared well prepared. Fugate recalled visiting an agency warehouse in Puerto Rico during his tenure, which did not include the response to Maria, and finding the shelves inside “barren.” The team there had stocked up based on what it needed during past responses, but Fugate said FEMA should be ready for the “worst-case scenario” on the island.
Eric R Garcia Flores, a member of a rescue unit in Caguas, a mountainous municipality that sustained extensive damage.FEMA officials said they cannot yet estimate the extent of the economic impact on the island, but stories of loss have emerged from several town and cities. “It wasn’t a castle, but it was my home, and that’s what made me feel happy,” Ramírez said in an interview with the outlet.In the central town of Cidra, Gabriela Colón Arzola described a harrowing escape from her flooding home with her two children. Water was rising in the house, threatening to trap them, she said in a video published byAfter finally wrenching the door open, she saw her car covered in water and washing machines floating down the street.
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