From Puerto Rico to Cuba, Caribbean officials brace for threat from Tropical Storm Laura
Islands in the northern Caribbean, from Puerto Rico to Hispaniola to Cuba, braced Friday for the onslaught of gusty winds and heavy rainfall from Laura, the latest tropical storm to come through the region in an already busy hurricane season.
In Puerto Rico, where residents were expected to begin feeling the effects as early as Friday evening, emergency management authorities were prepping 324 shelters and warning residents of the storm’s pending arrival. Late Friday, Gov. Wanda Vázquez said she had signed a state of emergency as Tropical Storm Laura approached the island.
“My message for all Puerto Ricans is to keep calm,” Vázquez said. “What’s most important is that people who live in flood zones or near rivers, know that they must look for a safe place to spend the night.”
The storm is the latest to hit an island that, in the last three years, has been through two major hurricanes and several sizable earthquakes and is dealing with a deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
Puerto Rico is expected to feel the peak of the storm’s force on the island Saturday morning. The system is expected to bring between 3 to 6 inches of rain to the island, although some areas could receive as many as 8 inches.
In Haiti, the emergency operations center was activated late Friday, and officials issued an orange alert for the entire country. Haitians were warned to expect the effects of Laura as early as Saturday evening and into Sunday. Lightning, floods and landslides were all expected to affect the northern region, but all of the territory could experience Laura’s strong wind gusts and heavy rainfall, said Jerry Chandler, the head of the Civil Protection Office.
“The south and southeast seem to be under the threat of heavy rains ... so we are prepping shelters and evacuation protocols in these areas,” Chandler said.
Last month, Haiti’s northern region was largely spared by Tropical Storm Isaias, the ninth named storm and second hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. But while it did little damage, civil protection officials warned that any weather event with rain could spell disaster for the vulnerable country, which is prone to deadly mudslides and landslides due to severe deforestation.
In the Dominican Republic, concerns heightened throughout the day as the storm changed path and the country appeared in the path of a possible direct hit. Emergency plans, officials said, included activating the military and 21 other state institutions to support the response if needed. The storm is expected to arrive between Saturday afternoon and evening.
“The grave impact we are going to have is now even more overwhelming,” Gloria Ceballos, director of the National Office of Meteorology, said. “The predicted trajectory indicates that the province of Maria Trinidad Sanchez could be the center.”
On Friday afternoon, only 13 Dominican provinces had been put on green alert, the lowest of the three emergency levels. With the storm expected to bring accumulated rainfall between 3 inches and 6 inches starting in the east of the country and moving north, the National Office of Meteorology issued flood and mudslide alerts for several provinces and warned that waves could get as high as 10 to 12 feet along the northern coast.
In a press conference Juan Manuel Méndez, director of the Center of Operations for Emergency, announced that there would be food stations and 2,532 shelters available for those displaced by the storm. He added that United Nations protocols, which include social distancing and the wearing of masks, would be followed to protect those in the shelters from COVID-19. The country is the epicenter of COVID-19 infections in the Caribbean, with 89,847 positive cases recorded and 1,533 deaths.
Francisco Arias, the deputy director of civil defense, warned the population that the number of people allowed into shelters will be limited and urged people who can to wait out the storm in their homes to reduce crowding in shelters.
“The COVID-19 protocols say we cannot have many people go to the shelters,” he said, adding that in the city of Santiago “each person who goes to the shelter needs to be evaluated by a public health member.”
Méndez did not respond to questions about whether health checks at shelters would be nationwide.
Laura was also being closely watched by authorities in the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos and Cuba. As of 5 p.m. a tropical storm watch remained in effect for the southeastern Bahamas, which includes the islands of Inagua, Mayaguna, Crooked Island, Acklins, Ragged Island, Long Cay and Samana Cay. A tropical storm watch was also in effect for the nearby British territory of the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The watch meant that the islands could begin to experience tropical storm conditions within 60 hours. Rainfall amounts of between 1 to 3 inches of rain were expected over the islands, which are low lying and prone to flooding.
“Localized flooding and gusty winds are expected in the aforementioned islands as the system approaches,” Bahamian officials said in a press release.
In Cuba on Friday, the storm was barely news on state media, even though forecasts show that Laura could reach the island on Sunday and move along its northern coast well into late Monday.
As of Friday afternoon, the government had yet to call out the National Civil Defense, a military branch that issues weather advisories and coordinates evacuation during natural disasters. The system has been efficient in preventing deaths.
Still, during Hurricane Irma in 2017, a delayed response resulted in 10 deaths and extensive damage throughout the island, including in Havana, where the storm surge caught the population by surprise.
During a pandemic and a severe economic crisis, an extensive evacuation operation in Cuba would face significant challenges. Several state facilities, such as schools, are currently in use as isolation centers for suspected coronavirus cases. Usually, many people will go to their neighbors’ sturdier homes to shelter, but it’s unclear how that would work while trying to keep social distance measures.
And the government has almost exhausted its meager financial resources in dealing with the pandemic. Shortages of food are prevalent. Readers of the official website Cubadebate asked authorities to start storm preparations such as securing roofs and cleaning street drains.
”The Civil Defense should decree the first phase [in the storm warning system] for the east and center” of the island, a user identified as YunierTrinidad said. “The situation of the pandemic makes everything more complicated, and the delay can be fatal.”
In Puerto Rico, Laura’s possible threat was of a definite concern. Chief Meteorologist Roberto García warned that unlike with Tropical Storm Isaias when conditions were drier, flooding and landslides are likelier this time around.
Nino Correa, head of the Puerto Rico Emergency Management Bureau, assured Puerto Ricans that the agency was ready to handle the storm’s effects, but encouraged people to stay home or in safe locations over the weekend.
To make his point, he recalled the case of Marisol Morales Ruiz, a 51-year-old woman who was swept away by the flash floods caused by Tropical Storm Isaias.
“She lost her life because she went to get a cake for her husband’s birthday,” Correa said. “But four days later he never imagined that he would be helping us to recover his wife’s body. Simply, overconfidence kills people.”
The Puerto Rico Public Housing Administrator said that across the island, 324 storm shelters would be available, which can open at the request of municipal mayors. The president of the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority said there were hundreds of emergency generators available to continue providing service if the power went out.
But Puerto Rico’s emergency management presents a complicated landscape. The island is managing not only this hurricane season, but also the convergence and impact of ongoing and past disasters: the COVID-19 pandemic, a sequence of earthquakes and the devastation from the 2017 hurricane season.
Hurricanes Maria and Irma, as well as the earthquakes, have weakened Puerto Rico’s infrastructure and made responding to the seemingly frequent emergencies on the island more challenging.
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority said at the press conference there were over 200 active brigades ready to help any communities that lose power as a result of the storm. Earlier in the day, Carlos Alvarado, the utility’s chief of technical operations, told local daily El Vocero that the electric company was prepared for the storm’s arrival.
“We as an agency are prepared to respond to any situation in the electrical system,” Alvarado said.
Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans were left without power the day before Tropical Storm Isaias even passed through, another reminder of the grid’s fragility. Thousands also did not have water service available. Many homes and communities waited for days before the utilities were restored.
Tropical Storm Laura presents another kind of threat to the earthquake-struck southwest of the island, which has experienced temblors since late December 2019, when faults in the area became active and brought thousands of earthquakes across the region. By March, more than 8,000 residences had suffered damages. During Isaias, a house in Yauco that had suffered structural damage from the quakes collapsed.
And the coronavirus is another disaster that emergency management officials must address as they make shelters available. In recent weeks, Puerto Rico’s caseload and deaths from the novel coronavirus have increased.
Pedro Bonilla, the municipal director of emergency management in the town of Villalba, said that officials historically tried to accommodate people who needed shelter services in relatives’ homes. With COVID-19, he said placing people in individuals’ homes was more important than ever.
Ana Celia Canales López, the municipal director of emergency management in the city of Carolina, said that the town would be activating two shelters, but would have a maximum of five available. She added that families would need to socially distance from each other, that they would be taking people’s temperatures at the entrance, and that they would be supplying face masks, hand sanitizer, and other items to people who did not bring their own.
“What’s most important is that no matter the emergency, that people know the municipality is available to offer help and services,” said Canales López.
This story was originally published August 21, 2020 at 7:08 PM.
