By Ivelisse Rivera and Liya Cui
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) – About half of all homes and businesses in Puerto Rico were without power on Wednesday as Hurricane Ernesto moved north into the warm waters of the Atlantic after dumping torrential rains on the U.S. territory.
More than 725,000 homes and businesses on the island were without power, out of a total of about 1.5 million customers, according to LUMA Energy, the Caribbean island’s largest electricity provider.
Juan Saca, president and CEO of LUMA, said he could not specify the extent of the damage to the system or how long it would take to restore power. He said more than 1,500 Saca employees were working on the ground.
“We are in the process of restoring service,” Saca said. “We need to assess what needs to be done to resolve the issue.”
Puerto Rico’s power grid is notoriously fragile. In 2022, Hurricane Fiona left about 80% of the island’s homes and businesses without power for a month. Five years earlier, Hurricanes Irma and Maria destroyed the island’s power grid, causing outages in some areas that lasted nearly a year.
Since Fiona, the U.S. Congress has approved $1 billion in funding to modernize and stabilize Puerto Rico’s power grid.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Ernesto, which had strengthened from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane earlier in the day, was located about 365 kilometers northwest of the Puerto Rican capital of San Juan and moving northwest with winds of about 120 kilometers per hour, the National Hurricane Center said.
Ernesto, the fifth named Atlantic storm of the season, is expected to approach the British island territory of Bermuda, about 680 miles (1,093 km) east of North Carolina, by Saturday, and rains are expected to begin as early as Thursday, the NHC said. Ernesto could become a major hurricane in about 48 hours, it said.
A storm is considered a hurricane when its sustained winds reach 74 mph (119 km/h). A major hurricane – Category 3 or higher – has sustained winds of at least 111 mph (179 km/h).
Puerto Rico’s Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport resumed operations on Wednesday afternoon after 145 flights were canceled over the past two days.
Before Ernesto’s effects are fully over, the U.S. Virgin Islands – east of Puerto Rico – could receive a total of up to 6 inches (15.2 cm) of rain, while southeastern Puerto Rico is expected to receive up to 10 inches (25.4 cm).
Tropical storm warnings for the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and surrounding islands were lifted Wednesday afternoon, but gusty winds are expected for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands for the remainder of the day.
Although there is no official damage report yet, Puerto Rico’s agriculture is likely to have been hit hard.
Agriculture Minister Ramón González Beiró said flooding had caused damage to banana and plantain plantations in some areas, and losses were also expected in coffee and most vegetable crops.
Ernesto is the second named storm in the Atlantic in a week during what is expected to be an intense hurricane season. Slow-moving Debby hit Florida’s Gulf Coast last week as a Category 1 hurricane before inundating some parts of the Carolinas with up to 2 feet (60 cm) of rain.
Hurricane Beryl, the first of the season, was the earliest Category 5 storm ever recorded in the Atlantic when it ripped through the Caribbean and Texas Gulf Coast last month, killing dozens of people and causing an estimated $6 billion in damage.
(Reporting by Ivelisse Rivera in San Juan and Liya Cui in New York; additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien; editing by Frank McGurty and Sandra Maler)
