ROSEAU, Dominica: Hurricane Maria swept over the small island of Dominica with catastrophic Category 5 winds overnight, starting a charge into the eastern Caribbean that threatens islands already devastated by Hurricane Irma and holds the possibility of a direct hit on Puerto Rico.
Fierce winds and driving rain lashed mountainous Dominica for hours, causing flooding and tearing roofs from homes. A police official on the island, Inspector Pellam Jno Baptiste, said late Monday that there were no immediate reports of casualties but it was still too dangerous for officers to do a full assessment as the storm raged outside.
“Where we are, we can't move,” he said in a brief phone interview while hunkered down against the region's second Category 5 hurricane this month.
Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit earlier captured the fury of Maria as it made landfall. “The winds are merciless! We shall survive by the grace of God,” Mr Skerrit wrote at the start of a series of increasingly harrowing posts on Facebook.
A few minutes later, he messaged he could hear the sound of galvanised steel roofs tearing off houses on the small rugged island.
He then wrote that he thought his home had been damaged. And three words: “Rough! Rough! Rough!”
A half hour later, he said: “My roof is gone. I am at the complete mercy of the hurricane. House is flooding.” Seven minutes later he posted that he had been rescued.
Officials in Guadeloupe said the French island near Dominica probably would experience heavy flooding and warned that many communities could be submerged. In nearby Martinique, authorities ordered people to remain indoors and said they should be prepared for power cuts and disruption in the water supply.
Video shows waves rocking boats, flooding roads in Barbados as Hurricane #Maria passed to the island's north Monday. https://t.co/ti1dcwnQL1 pic.twitter.com/pXyCyXGklv
— ABC News (@ABC) September 19, 2017
(Video Twitter/ @ABC)
Authorities in the US territory of Puerto Rico warned that people in wooden or flimsy homes should find safe shelter before the storm's expected arrival there on Wednesday.
“You have to evacuate. Otherwise, you're going to die,” said Hector Pesquera, the island's public safety commissioner. “I don't know how to make this any clearer.”
Maria had maximum sustained winds of 260kph late Monday. The eye was atop Dominica and about 435km southeast of St Croix in the US Virgin Islands. It was heading west-northwest at 15 kph.
The US National Hurricane Center said the storm would likely intensify over the next 24 hours or longer, noting its eye had shrunk to a compact 10 miles across and warning: “Maria is developing the dreaded pinhole eye.”
That generally means an extremely strong hurricane will get even mightier, said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami. He said it just like when a spinning ice skater brings in their arms and rotates faster.
“You just don't see those in weaker hurricanes,” he said.
Hurricane warnings were posted for the US and British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe, Dominica, St. Kitts, Nevis and Montserrat. A tropical storm warning was issued for Martinique, Antigua and Barbuda, Saba, St Eustatius, St Maarten, St Lucia and Anguilla.
The current forecast track would carry it about 35 km south of St Croix in the US Virgin Islands late Tuesday and early Wednesday, territorial Gov Kenneth Mapp said.
“We are going to have a very, very long night,” Mapp said as he urged people in the territory to finish any preparations.
(Reuters video)