Hurricane Maria Live Updates Puerto Rico Suffers a Direct Hit With Worri...

Hurricane Maria Live Updates Puerto Rico Suffers a Direct Hit With Worries of Floods



SAN JUAN, P.R. — Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico as a powerful Category 4 storm early Wednesday, cutting electricity and phone lines, sending thousands of people into shelters and raising the prospect of deadly floods. The storm was bringing new misery to a region that has seen two other powerful hurricanes, Irma and Jose, in recent weeks.



As of 11 a.m., Maria’s core was moving over Puerto Rico with 140 m.p.h. winds, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm was expected to produce “life-threatening flooding,” with 12 to 18 inches of rain falling in Puerto Rico through Friday and an additional five to 10 inches of rain in the Virgin islands.



As the hurricane moved in, residents across Puerto Rico were awakened by the clamor of strengthening wind gusts.



“For Irma, we were very prepared,” Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said on CNN on Wednesday morning. “Unfortunately, of course, now we’re feeling a second storm in two weeks, and this one much more devastating than the first one. Who knows what the damage will be?”



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Flooding and mudslides are major concerns, he warned, and the rain that follows the brunt of the storm could be just as dangerous as the winds.



Here’s the latest:



• The storm made landfall at Yabucoa in Puerto Rico’s southeast shortly after 6 a.m., with winds as strong as 155 m.p.h. It had crossed the United States Virgin Islands as a Category 5 storm, then weakened slightly but remained “extremely dangerous.”



• Electricity was knocked out for the whole island, according to a spokeswoman from the Puerto Rico State Agency for Emergency and Disaster Management.



• Governor Rosselló said that 11,000 people were reported to have gone to shelters, but that the real number was most likely higher.



• Hartley Henry, an adviser to Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit of Dominica, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that there had been seven confirmed deaths from Hurricane Maria on that island. Two people were also killed on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, officials said.



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Flooding is a major concern in Puerto Rico



“We know there are severe damages along different rivers and reservoirs, and water has overflowed from riverbanks, causing flooding,” Governor Rosselló said in an interview with El Nuevo Día, the largest daily newspaper in Puerto Rico.



“This is just the beginning,” he said of the rain. “A lot of rain is yet to fall and that’s going to cause a lot of flooding and more threats to lives.”



The National Weather Service in San Juan reported Wednesday morning that there was a flash flooding emergency along the Río de la Plata basin. The municipalities of Comerío, Naranjito, Dorado, Toa Baja and Toa Alta, all of which are along the river, were expected to be effected until at least 4 p.m. Eastern time.



Five gates of La Plata reservoir in Toa Alta, a town near the island’s capital, were opened on Wednesday morning to reduce increased water levels due to Maria’s heavy rains, the Puerto Rico State Agency for Emergency and Disaster Management said.



Photos and videos posted on social media showed numerous instances of severe flooding on the island.



Puerto Ricans woke up to strong winds



Residents of Puerto Rico braced for a more direct hit than from Irma, which killed three people there and knocked out power to many.



As the storm moved in, Jerika Llano, 27, took refuge with three family members in her concrete home in Bayamón, a town near the island’s capital. She said the wind was “blowing hard and screaming.”



“Almost all the trees have fallen, and I can see aluminum roofs flying,” she said. “The doors and gates vibrate because of the power of the gusts.”



In the town of Cataño in northern Puerto Rico, several houses lost their zinc roofs and the roof of a church was ripped apart, Felix Delgado Montalvo, the town’s mayor, said on a local radio station.



“My message now is not to leave your houses until the situation is over,” he told listeners.



Federal officials say they are prepared to help



President Trump said on Wednesday that he had “never seen” winds like the ones generated by Hurricane Maria as it made landfall in Puerto Rico.



“We have a big one going right now — I’ve never seen winds like this — in Puerto Rico,” he said as he entered a meeting in New York with King Abdullah II of Jordan. “You take a look at what’s happening there, and it’s just one after another.”