The eye of the hurricane struck the nation early Monday, pummeling communities with maximum sustained winds of 90 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center said. It comes after the storm wreaked havoc across Puerto Rico on Sunday and Monday, leaving the US territory in blackout and bringing devastation not seen on the island since Hurricane Maria in 2017, officials said.
At least three people died in the severe weather, including one in the French territory of Guadeloupe and two in Puerto Rico, officials said. In Puerto Rico, a 58-year-old man was swept away by a swollen river behind his home in Comerio, and another man in his 30s died in a fire that started while trying to put gas in his generator while it was turned on. at, officials said. As of Monday afternoon, at least 1,018,564 customers across the Dominican Republic were without access to running water as 59 aqueducts were out of service and several others were only partially functional, according to Jose Luis German Mejia, a national emergency management official . Some were also without power Monday as 10 electrical circuits went out, emergency management officials said. It’s unclear how many people are affected by the outage. Heavy rains continued to lash eastern areas of the Dominican Republic on Monday afternoon, and life-threatening flooding is expected to continue into Tuesday.

Fiona is strengthening as she pushes north

Fiona intensified to a Category 3 storm as it moved off the northern coast of the Dominican Republic early Tuesday with sustained winds of up to 115 mph with gusts of up to 130 mph, according to the hurricane center. The designation now classifies Fiona as a major hurricane, the first of the Atlantic era. However, the storm’s strongest stages may be yet to come as Fiona is expected to strengthen to a Category 4 by the time it passes near or west of Bermuda on Thursday night. The storm’s center will likely continue to push northward, moving near or east of the Turks and Caicos on Tuesday, according to the forecast. Hurricane conditions will likely develop in Turks and Caicos on Tuesday, and by late Monday or early Tuesday the Bahamas are expected to be under tropical storm conditions, the hurricane center said.

Fiona leaves devastated Puerto Rico behind

Even as a tropical storm warning was lifted over Puerto Rico, the island continued to be battered by the hurricane’s outer zones, inundating areas already facing dangerous flooding and damage. As Tuesday marks five years since Hurricane Maria’s devastating landfall, some who lived through the 2017 crisis say Fiona’s flood devastation could be even worse. Juan Miguel Gonzalez, a business owner in Puerto Rico told CNN that his neighborhood had not yet finished recovering from Maria when Fiona hit. But this time, he says, the floods caused even more damage to their homes. “A lot of people — more than (during) Maria — have lost their homes now … they’ve lost everything in their homes because of the flooding,” Gonzalez told CNN’s Leyla Santiago. “Maria had strong winds. But she, with all the rain, destroyed everything in the house.” Most of the damage on the island was related to the rain, Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi told CNN Monday night. More than 1.2 million customers were still in the dark as of early Tuesday, according to estimates by PowerOutage.us, which notes that updated information on restoration efforts is limited. Pierluisi said he hoped it would be “a matter of days” for most customers to have power restored. The company that oversees the region’s power grid, LUMA Energy, previously said transmission line outages contributed to the blackout and on Monday said it had restored power to more than 100,000 customers. Significantly, power was restored to one of Puerto Rico’s most vital medical facilities on Monday, according to the region’s health secretary Dr. Carlos Melando López. “Power to all hospitals in the Medical Center complex has been restored,” Melando said in a tweet Sunday night. “Our patients are safe and getting the medical care they need.” Many of those without power are also without water, as the effects of rain and flooding on filtration systems left only about 35 percent of customers with water as of Monday, the governor said. Emergency crews battled relentless rain to rescue about 1,000 people as of midday Monday, said Lt. Gen. José Reyes, adjutant general of the Puerto Rico National Guard. In addition to the hundreds of members of the Puerto Rico National Guard helping with rescue and recovery efforts, the White House said Monday that President Joe Biden told Pierluigi during a phone call that federal support would increase in the coming days. “As damage assessments are conducted, the President said the number of support personnel will be increased significantly,” the White House said. New York Governor Kathy Hochul also announced that the state will send 100 state troopers to aid relief efforts in Puerto Rico. He also said teams from the New York Power Authority are available to help restore power. CNN’s Leyla Santiago in San Juan, Puerto Rico and CNN’s Nikki Carvajal, Robert Shackelford, Melissa Alonso, Artemis Moshtaghian, Taylor Ward, Holly Yan and Jamiel Lynch contributed to this report