Hurricane Maria yesterday churned toward the Turks and Caicos Islands after lashing Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands with winds and rain that destroyed homes, flooded streets, crippled economies and left at least 32 people dead.
Maria is the second major hurricane to hit the Caribbean this month and the strongest storm to hit the US territory of Puerto Rico in nearly 90 years. It knocked out the island’s power and several rivers hit record flood levels.
At least 15 people were killed in Puerto Rico, newspaper El Nuevo Dia reported.
Photo: AFP
Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello told cable TV news channel CNN he had reports of at least 13 people on the island being killed.
“We have a lot of flooding,” he said in the interview, adding that there “was a major disaster here in Puerto Rico.”
Fourteen deaths were reported on the island nation of Dominica, which has a population of about 71,000.
Two others were killed in the French territory of Guadeloupe and one on the US Virgin Islands.
The death toll in the Caribbean is likely to rise when searches resume at daybreak.
Rossello imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew through today for the island’s 3.4 million people.
He said about 700 people have been rescued from floodwaters and communication was difficult with the southeastern part of the island.
Among those killed in Puerto Rico were eight people who drowned in Toa Baja, about 32km west of San Juan, Toa Baja Mayor Bernardo Marquez told the newspaper.
Three elderly sisters were killed by a mudslide on Wednesday in the mountainous central municipality of Utuado, El Nuevo Dia said, citing relatives and the mayor of Utuado.
In the heart of the island’s capital, San Juan, which has a fort and buildings from the Spanish colonial era, the storm left a trail of wreckage. Toppled trees cut power lines and streets were turned into rivers.
US President Donald Trump told reporters that the island had been “totally obliterated” and he planned to visit.
Puerto Rico was already facing the largest municipal debt crisis in US history.
A team of judges overseeing its bankruptcy has advised involved parties to put legal proceedings on hold indefinitely as the island recovers, a source familiar with the proceedings said.
Maria was a Category 3 storm on the five-tier Saffir-Simpson scale, with sustained winds of up to 205kph, and was 55km east-northeast of Grand Turk Island as of 5am EDT, the US National Hurricane Center said.
It was forecast to bring storm surges of up to 3.7m to the southeastern Bahamas, as well as the Turks and Caicos, the center said, adding that a gradual weakening was forecast for the next 48 hours as the storm heads north in the Atlantic Ocean.
Maria was expected to drop as much as 102cm of rain on Puerto Rico and an island-wide flash flood watch was in effect.
Between 20cm and 40cm of rain was expected on Turks and Caicos, which could cause flash floods and mudslides, the center said.
Maria looked unlikely to hit the continental US, but its storm swells were expected to reach the southeastern coast from yesterday, it added.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
RESTAURANT POISONING? Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang at a press conference last night said this was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan An autopsy discovered bongkrekic acid in a specimen collected from a person who died from food poisoning after dining at the Malaysian restaurant chain Polam Kopitiam, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said at a news conference last night. It was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) said. The testing conducted by forensic specialists at National Taiwan University was facilitated after a hospital voluntarily offered standard samples it had in stock that are required to test for bongkrekic acid, he said. Wang told the news conference that testing would continue despite
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)