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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Tropical Storm Ernesto pummels northeast Caribbean, leaves hundreds of thousands in the dark

by

344 days ago
20240814

Trop­i­cal Storm Ernesto dropped tor­ren­tial rain on Puer­to Ri­co on Wednes­day and left hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple with­out pow­er in the U.S. ter­ri­to­ry as it threat­ened to strength­en in­to a ma­jor hur­ri­cane en route to Bermu­da.

The storm was lo­cat­ed about 125 miles (200 kilo­me­ters) north­west of San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co and was mov­ing over open wa­ters. It had max­i­mum sus­tained winds of 70 mph (110 kph) and was mov­ing north­west at 16 mph (26 kph).

“While it is pos­si­ble Ernesto is al­ready a hur­ri­cane, radar da­ta does not yet sup­port an up­grade,” the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter in Mi­a­mi said.

Ernesto is ex­pect­ed to be­come a hur­ri­cane lat­er Wednes­day.

A trop­i­cal storm warn­ing was in ef­fect for Puer­to Ri­co, Vieques, Cule­bra and the U.S. and British Vir­gin Is­lands.

Schools and gov­ern­ment agen­cies re­mained closed on those is­lands, where heavy flood­ing was re­port­ed in sev­er­al ar­eas, forc­ing of­fi­cials to block roads.

“A lot of rain, a lot of rain,” Cule­bra May­or Edil­ber­to Ju­ni­to Romero said in a phone in­ter­view. “We have trees that have fall­en on pub­lic roads. There are some roofs that are blown off.”

Ernesto is fore­cast to move through open wa­ters for the rest of the week and make its clos­est ap­proach to Bermu­da on Sat­ur­day. It is ex­pect­ed to be­come a ma­jor Cat­e­go­ry 3 storm in the up­com­ing days, with fore­cast­ers warn­ing of heavy swells along the U.S. East Coast as Ernesto moves north-north­west in the At­lantic.

“That means that any­body who goes to the beach, even if the weath­er is beau­ti­ful and nice, it could be dan­ger­ous … with those rip cur­rents,” said Rob­bie Berg, warn­ing co­or­di­na­tion me­te­o­rol­o­gist with the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter.

Be­tween 4 to 6 inch­es of rain is ex­pect­ed in the U.S. and British Vir­gin Is­lands and be­tween 6 to 8 inch­es in Puer­to Ri­co, with up to 10 inch­es in iso­lat­ed ar­eas.

The gov­ern­ment of the U.S. Vir­gin Is­lands re­port­ed an is­land-wide black­out in St. Croix, while in Puer­to Ri­co, more than 300,000 cus­tomers were with­out pow­er.

Late on Tues­day, the U.S. Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency had warned peo­ple in both U.S. ter­ri­to­ries to pre­pare for “ex­tend­ed pow­er out­ages.”

Luma En­er­gy, the com­pa­ny that op­er­ates trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of pow­er in Puer­to Ri­co, said ear­ly Wednes­day that its pri­or­i­ty was to re­store pow­er to hos­pi­tals, the is­land’s wa­ter and sew­er com­pa­ny and oth­er es­sen­tial ser­vices.

Puer­to Ri­co’s pow­er grid was razed by Hur­ri­cane Maria in Sep­tem­ber 2017 as a Cat­e­go­ry 4 storm, and it re­mains frail as crews con­tin­ue to re­build the sys­tem.

Not every­one can af­ford gen­er­a­tors on the is­land of 3.2 mil­lion peo­ple with a more than 40% pover­ty rate.

“Peo­ple al­ready pre­pared them­selves with can­dles,” said Lucía Ro­dríguez, a 31-year-old street ven­dor.

Puer­to Ri­co Gov. Pe­dro Pier­luisi an­nounced late Tues­day that U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden had ap­proved his re­quest to use emer­gency FE­MA funds as a re­sult of the trop­i­cal storm.

Ernesto is the fifth named storm of this year’s At­lantic hur­ri­cane sea­son.

The Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion has pre­dict­ed an above-av­er­age At­lantic hur­ri­cane sea­son this year be­cause of record warm ocean tem­per­a­tures. It fore­cast 17 to 25 named storms, with four to sev­en ma­jor hur­ri­canes of Cat­e­go­ry 3 or high­er.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ist Julie Walk­er, who was in New York, con­tributed.

By  DÁNI­CA CO­TO

SAN JUAN, Puer­to Ri­co (AP)


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