Catastrophic Flooding in Puerto Rico as Hurricane Fiona Dumps Nearly 30 Inches of Rain

Hurricane Fiona struck Puerto Rico’s southwest coast on Sunday, bringing destructive flooding, mudslides and an island-wide power blackout one day after leaving one dead in the Leeward Islands.

The storm went on to make a second landfall in the Dominican Republic very early on Monday morning.

By Monday morning, a small number of the more than 1.4 million power customers in Puerto Rico began to have electricity restored.

Fiona made landfall at 3:20 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Sept. 18, on the extreme southwestern coast of Puerto Rico, near Punta Tocon. Fiona was a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph, when it made landfall.

LUMA Energy, the private company that handles the transmission and distribution of electricity in Puerto Rico, stated that full power restoration could take days "due to the magnitude and scope of the blackout."