Thousands of Puerto Ricans still without power or water five days after Hurricane Fiona struck island

Fiona destroyed roads, washed away homes and knocked out power for all of the island’s 3.3 million residents on Sunday.

by Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech | Sep. 22, 2022

Homes are flooded on Salinas Beach after the passing of Hurricane Fiona in Salinas, Puerto Rico, Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)

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Hurricane Fiona struck Puerto Rico on Sunday, causing flash flooding and an island-wide blackout.

As of Thursday, nearly a million homes and businesses still lacked power.

It remains unclear when the power will return to the most affected areas of the island.

It has been five days since Hurricane Fiona struck Puerto Rico, and many on the island are still waking up without power or clean water.

As of Thursday morning, about 968,000 homes and businesses still do not have electricity after the storm knocked out power across the entire island on Sunday, according to poweroutage.us, a site that tracks blackouts and outages across the United States.

The island’s private power company, LUMA Energy, said that service has been restored to 420,000 clients or 28 percent of their total clientele.

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Many of those who have gotten power back live in the San Juan Metropolitan area.

Thousands of islanders are still without water as well. As of early Thursday, more than 437,650 homes and businesses were without clean water, or almost 33 percent of the customers of the island’s only water company, the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Agency, according to the island’s emergency portal system.

Islanders have been forced to wait in long lines to fill up jugs from water trucks and in some cases have been collecting water from what trickles down the sides of mountains, The Associated Press reported.

Fiona has now turned into a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 130 miles per hour and is heading towards Bermuda.

A hurricane warning is in effect for the British isle.

Forecasters predict that the storm will move north, parallel to the eastern coast of the U.S., with the storm’s eye expected to pass just west of Bermuda Thursday night.

Fiona could then make it to Nova Scotia by Friday before moving into the Gulf of St. Lawrence this weekend, according to the National Hurricane Center.