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President Biden announced on Thursday that the federal government will cover 100% of costs related to Hurricane Fiona relief in Puerto Rico for the next month after the storm left hundreds of thousands without access to electricity or running water.
The announcement was part of a major disaster declaration and will help with debris removal, search and rescue efforts, power and water restoration, shelter, and food as the island starts to pick up the pieces following the devastating effects the storm caused. The declaration will also make federal funding available for individuals affected by the storm.
Puerto Rico in many ways was still recovering from Hurricane Maria which hit the island five years ago when Fiona hit, wiping out much of the infrastructure progress that had been made.
An estimated 1 million homes and businesses remain without power in Puerto Rico Thursday morning causing an island-wide power outage for its roughly 3.3 million people.
Hurricane Fiona is now heading toward Bermuda and then eastern Canada as a major hurricane with winds of up to 130 miles per hour (215 kilometers per hour). The storm has killed at least eight people.
Eric Blake, acting branch chief for the NHC in Miami, said Bermuda would see high surf, storm surges, heavy rainfall, and powerful winds even if Fiona kept on its current path and passed to the west of the island. Bermuda will see the worst of the storm by late Thursday, the NHC said.
“Hopefully, the core of the storm will stay west, but it could still jog east and hit Bermuda,” Blake said, adding that the U.S. East Coast would experience large swells and rip currents as the storm churns toward Canada.
“This will be a big deal up there,” he told Reuters, referring to Fiona’s track toward Canada’s Atlantic provinces of Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Poweroutages.com, which estimates power outages based on utility data, said 1.033 million customers were without service early Thursday based on what it called limited information available from LUMA Energy, which operates Puerto Rico‘s grid.
There were roughly 1.168 million without power early Wednesday out of 1.468 million total customers, according to Poweroutages.com.
That pace of restoration is much faster than after Maria when almost all 1.5 million customers had no power for a week when the now bankrupt Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) was still operating the grid.
It took PREPA about 11 months to restore power to all customers, but Maria was a much more powerful storm than Fiona.
Maria hit Puerto Rico as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 155 mph, while Fiona hit as a Category 1 storm with winds of 85 mph.
LUMA Energy said late Wednesday that it had restored service to nearly 376,000 customers, but said “full restoration could take several days.”
Fiona is believed to have caused at least eight deaths, including that of a sick 4-month-old infant whose mother struggled to get to the hospital due to a blocked road. The deaths are under investigation.
Copyright 2022 Thomson/Reuters (additions and edits for FISM News by Michael Cardinal)