Nearly 800 people have been brought to safety by emergency workers in the Dominican Republic, according to the country’s director of emergency management operations, Juan Manuel Méndez. He said at least 519 people took refuge in the country’s 29 shelters on Monday.
At least four people have died due to the severe weather, including one in the French province of Guadeloupe, who was criticized by Fiona late last week; two in Puerto Rico; and one in the Dominican Republic, according to officials.
In Puerto Rico, a 58-year-old man was swept away by an overgrown river behind his home in Comerio and another man in his 30s died in a fire accident that occurred while trying to put gasoline into his generator while it was spinning. Ali, officials said.
As of Monday afternoon, at least 1018,564 customers across the Dominican Republic had no access to running water as 59 aqueducts were out of service and many others were only partially operating, according to Jose Luis Germain Mejia. National Emergency Management Officer.
Emergency management officials said some were without power on Monday with 10 circuits out of power. It is unclear how many people were affected by the outage.
Fiona gets stronger as she rushes north
This is the first major hurricane – Category 3 or higher – of the Atlantic hurricane season this year.
Those islands could see 4 to 8 inches of rain Tuesday above what they received earlier, as well as storm surges — pushing ocean waters to land — 5 to 8 feet, according to the Hurricane Center.
Hurricane conditions are likely to be seen in the Turks and Caicos Islands through Tuesday morning, and tropical storm conditions — winds of at least 39 mph — are expected to spread over southeast Panamanian territory Tuesday morning.
Over the weekend, Fiona could make landfall in eastern Canada as a hurricane. It’s too early to know exactly where or how strong it is.
Fiona leaves behind a devastated Puerto Rico
Fiona’s outer bands continued to pummel Puerto Rico late Monday, as already-struggling areas plunged under dangerous flooding and devastation.
Juan Miguel Gonzalez, a Puerto Rican business owner, told CNN that his neighborhood had not yet finished recovering from Maria when she hit Fiona. But this time, he says, the floods caused even deeper damage to their homes.
“A lot of people – more than (through) Maria – have lost their homes now … have lost everything in their homes to the floods,” Gonzalez told CNN on Monday. “Maria’s wind was stormy. But this wind, with all the rain, destroyed everything in the house.”
Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi told CNN Monday night that most of the damage to the island is rain-related.
Crucially, power was returned to one of Puerto Rico’s most vital medical facilities on Monday, according to the province’s health minister, Dr. Carlos Melado Lopez.
Many of those without electricity also had no water, the governor said, as the effects of rain and flooding on filtration systems left only about 35% of customers with water service as of Monday.
Major General Jose Reyes, an assistant general in the Puerto Rican National Guard, said emergency crews were battling relentless rain to save nearly 1,000 lives as of midday Monday.
“With damage assessments in place, the president said the number of support personnel will increase significantly,” the White House said.
New York Governor Cathy Hochhol also announced that the state will send 100 state troops to assist relief efforts in Puerto Rico. She also said that teams from the New York Energy Authority are available to help restore energy.
CNN’s Leila Santiago, CNN’s Nicky Carvajal, Robert Shackleford, Melissa Alonso, Artemis Mochtagian, Taylor Ward, Holly Yan and Jamil Lynch contributed to this report.
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