Hurricane Fiona made landfall in the Dominican Republic early Monday after slamming Puerto Rico with heavy rain, life-threatening flooding and an islandwide power outage.
The Category 1 storm came ashore near Boca de Yuma at 3:30 a.m. with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.
The hurricane made landfall on the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico Sunday afternoon, bearing down on the island with severe winds of up to 75 miles per hour and bringing 6-24 inches of rain to some areas by the end of the day, according to the National Weather Service. LUMA Energy, the main power utility in Puerto Rico, said in a statement Sunday it could be days before power is restored, adding "several transmission line outages" are contributing to the blackout. The process will be done "gradually," Governor Pedro Pierluisi said in a Facebook post.
Some parts of the island still bear the scars of Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico almost exactly five years ago. After Hurricane Maria inflicted catastrophic damage to the territory's infrastructure, it took almost a year for power to be restored across the island. One video of the dangerous flooding shows the rushing waters easily wipe away a bridge, carrying its structure downstream. Another taken by Samuel De Jesús depicts a scene in the city of Arecibo as the rain falls in sheets, adding to the quickly-moving waters overtaking large construction vehicles and entire trees.
More than 300 FEMA emergency workers were on the ground to respond to the crisis, the agency's Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery, Anne Bink, told CNN.
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