Fiona continues to crack down.

First major hurricane of the season in the Atlantic, it continued its devastating route north on Wednesday, September 21, heading towards the Bermuda archipelago after raging in the Caribbean where it caused the death of at least five people.

The hurricane was rated Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson scale – which has 5 – by the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC).

“Fiona will approach Bermuda late Thursday,” the NHC said, adding that the hurricane, accompanied by sustained winds of up to 210 kilometers per hour, was 170 km north of the Turks and Caicos Islands on Wednesday morning. .

Fiona, then a tropical storm, formed in mid-September in the middle of the Atlantic and sowed death and destruction during its passage through the Caribbean.

A man died in Guadeloupe, washed away with his house by the waves of a flooded river.

Two people died in the Dominican Republic and two others in Puerto Rico.

In the Turks and Caicos Islands, no casualties have been reported, said the territory's deputy governor Anya Williams, calling on residents to continue to shelter.

More than 10,000 displaced 

The British Navy and US Coastguard stand ready to provide assistance, she said.

Among the 38,000 inhabitants of this British overseas territory, many have suffered power cuts.

Fiona had previously touched the Dominican Republic and its 11 million inhabitants.

President Luis Abinader has declared a state of natural disaster in three provinces in the east – La Altagracia where the resort town of Punta Cana is located, El Seibo and Hato Mayor.

Authorities said on Tuesday that more than 10,000 people have been displaced, while 400,000 are without electricity and 1.2 million have no access to water.

Images broadcast by local media showed residents of Higuey, on the east coast, trying to recover belongings, immersed in water up to their waists.

Several roads were flooded or cut off around Punta Cana by falling trees or electric poles and the power supply was interrupted, according to AFP journalists.

"It came at full speed," Vicente Lopez told AFP, lamenting the damage suffered by businesses.

In Puerto Rico, a US territory struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria five years ago, Fiona caused landslides, knocked down trees and power lines, made roads impassable and swept away a bridge in the town of Utuado.

"catastrophic" damage

US President Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, attended by the head of the US Disaster Management Agency (FEMA), Deanne Criswell.

"We are sending hundreds of additional personnel," said Deanne Criswell on Tuesday after a tour of the island, accompanied by Governor Pedro Pierluisi.

"About 80% of Puerto Ricans are still without electricity and some 65% without water," said Michelle Carlo, medical advisor for the humanitarian organization Direct Relief in Puerto Rico, interviewed by CBS News television.

The hurricane caused "catastrophic" damage, Pierluisi said on Sunday.

According to the authorities of this island of three million inhabitants, nearly 800,000 people remain deprived of drinking water.

The Puerto Rican agricultural sector has been devastated, according to the president of a farmers' association, Hector Cordero, who said in a radio interview on Tuesday that the banana, vegetable and coffee crops had been badly affected.

"Agriculture has basically disappeared", washed away by the deluge, he said.

The entire territory of Puerto Rico had been without electricity as the hurricane approached.

Power has so far only been restored to just under 300,000 customers of the LUMA electricity company.

The governor said on Tuesday he expects "large parts of the island" to have power again by evening or Wednesday.

With AFP

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