Patricia Mazzei, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Mitch Smith

Dorian has been unpredictable, frustrating forecasters and paralyzing Puerto Ricans for days as they watched the storm track shift toward the island. At one point, it looked as if Dorian would cut an eerily parallel path to Maria’s destruction, albeit with far less intensity. Puerto Ricans lined up outside big-box stores to stock up on supplies and swamped a mental health hotline to get help with their anxiety.

“So many people are hysterical, and it’s because Maria was strong,” said Carmen Vargas, 54, a resident of rural Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, near San Juan, the capital, as she vividly recalled the 2017 storm. “Even though we know it’s not the same, the memories come back, and the wounds reopen.”

By Wednesday morning, the eye of the storm had veered toward the Virgin Islands, where Dorian’s drenching rain and whipping winds surprised residents who felt unprepared to face the Category 1 hurricane. By Wednesday afternoon, the storm had rolled into warm Atlantic waters, where it is expected to strengthen into a Category 3 hurricane that could begin battering the east coast of Florida as early as the weekend.

The period between mid-August through mid-October is the most active time of the Atlantic hurricane season.

“We’ve done this before,” said Mayor Lenny Curry of Jacksonville, Florida, a city that sustained heavy damage from flooding two years ago during Hurricane Irma. “We’ve been through this together. This is no time to panic.”

Officials in Puerto Rico, home to some 3.2 million people, felt relief that Dorian, which swiped the island municipality of Culebra, mostly spared the main island. Stronger winds would have further tested Puerto Rico’s revamped electrical grid, which collapsed after Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 left the entire island without power.

“The electrical grid is held together with tape,” said Mayor María E. Meléndez of Ponce, on the south side of the island.

The grid remains fragile and prone to power losses. Some 30,000 people still have blue tarps, which were supposed to be temporary, as roofs. Hurricane Maria has been blamed for the deaths of an estimated 2,975 people.

On Wednesday, a man died in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, said Elmer Román, Puerto Rico’s secretary of public safety. The man, who was 80, fell from a ladder as he tried to reach his roof to clear drains ahead of the storm, El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s largest newspaper, reported.

A suicide prevention center that saw an extraordinary increase in demand after Maria reported a growing number of calls as Hurricane Dorian approached, said Suzanne Roig, who runs Puerto Rico’s Administration of Services for Mental Health and Addiction, which operates the center’s hotline. On Friday, the calls specifically referring to Maria numbered eight. On Tuesday, they rose to 282.

Callers said they could not imagine going through another storm like Maria, Roig said.

“Sometimes, they even cry,” she said. “They cry remembering the traumatic event. Some of them were alone during the other hurricane, and they feel they are going to be alone again. It’s fear.”

Ahead of Dorian, Roig’s agency sent mental health specialists to all of Puerto Rico’s 78 municipalities to assist local authorities. Teams also visited vulnerable residents and communities, encouraging them to focus on how they had strengthened their homes and personal emergency plans from two years ago — rather than to dwell on matters outside their control, such as the storm’s track and wind speed.

On radio and television, the specialists urged people to calmly prepare children for the possibility of losing power and to keep board games and cards handy to pass the time.

“We lived through a difficult experience, and we really have to use that as a lesson,” Roig said.

Without fail, Puerto Ricans interviewed Wednesday shared their stories from two years ago, which Dorian returned to the forefront of their minds.

“Part of my house is made of wood, and the zinc roof blew off, and it started to fill with water,” said Lourdes López, 44, a San Juan resident who went with her husband, Juan Ortega, 46, to fill gas containers at a gas station Wednesday morning. “For Maria we were home, and we were really scared.”

As Puerto Ricans worried about the storm, President Donald Trump continued his long-running verbal war with the island’s leaders. On Tuesday, Trump approved Puerto Rico’s request for an emergency declaration, authorizing federal coordination of relief efforts and assistance. But in a series of Twitter posts Wednesday, Trump assailed Puerto Rico as “one of the most corrupt places on earth.”

“Their political system is broken and their politicians are either Incompetent or Corrupt,” he wrote.

He singled out Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz of San Juan, with whom he sparred repeatedly after Hurricane Maria. She responded with a tweet of her own: “Maybe Trump will understand this time around THIS IS NOT ABOUT HIM; THIS IS NOT ABOUT POLITICS; THIS IS ABOUT SAVING LIVES.”

Dorian proved to be maddeningly difficult to forecast, as often happens with compact, disorganized storms.

Mountains in the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia broke up the storm’s center Tuesday, and when it formed again, it had moved 30 miles north. Dorian’s path had shifted from the west side of Puerto Rico to just off the eastern coast, said Mike Brennan, branch chief of the Hurricane Specialist Unit at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

“That changed the whole trajectory of the track,” Brennan said.

Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. of the U.S. Virgin Islands issued a territorywide curfew for its 105,000 residents until Thursday morning. Electricity went out throughout the islands, where nearly 3,000 homes were still in need of repair after the 2017 hurricanes, said Stacey Plaskett, the Virgin Islands’ delegate to Congress.

The Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority said Wednesday evening that crews were assessing the electrical grid to see if Dorian had caused damage. The agency said service in much of the territory remained on during the storm, and that power was already being restored in parts of St. Thomas that experienced outages.

“Although this is not a large hurricane, we’re in such a compromised position as it is,” Plaskett said from Christiansted, on St. Croix, where she described seeing swaying trees, dark skies and rain. She said many people had stayed inside since the morning. They recalled what they were doing around this time two years ago, amid the devastation from Irma and Maria.

The islands’ two largest hospitals — on St. Thomas and St. Croix — were operating with half of their buildings damaged, Plaskett said. On St. Croix, she said, only one operating room was open.

“We’re in a very fragile kind of state,” she said.

Lorie Leonard, a manager at the Bolongo Bay Beach Resort on St. Thomas, said she and other staffers had scrambled to get 62 guests to their rooms as the hurricane approached.

At the resort, palm trees toppled near the pool and branches fell on cars. Fans crashed to the restaurant’s floor. And water flooded the hotel and washed away much of the shorefront’s sand.

“It’s a mess,” Leonard said. “It was a lot of destruction in a very short period of time.”

Plaskett said she had driven around St. Croix on Wednesday and seen many residents who were anxious about the storm because the 2017 hurricanes had been so traumatic. She said several were staying with friends or relatives because their own homes were damaged.

Some of the private schools on the island had been scheduled to open for the academic year Wednesday, but the storm prompted them to postpone opening. Officials had already been concerned about whether the schools were ready to open and now may need to reevaluate them after the weather settles down.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida declared an emergency Wednesday afternoon for counties in the storm’s path even though landfall was not expected until Monday morning. The lack of clarity on Dorian’s route forced precaution along Florida’s East Coast everywhere from Miami to Jacksonville.

“Because of the uncertainty in the track of this storm, every resident along the East Coast needs to be ready,” Jared Moskowitz, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said in a statement.

In St. Cloud, Florida, and Camden County, Georgia, officials began distributing sandbags. In Orange County, Florida, firefighters added metal shutters to their stations. And in Cocoa, Florida, city crews cleaned out storm drains.

For now, Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez of Miami-Dade County asked residents to watch and wait. A Rolling Stones concert planned for the holiday weekend remained on schedule.

“There’s no reason to cancel anything at this point,” Gimenez said. “We don’t know exactly where this storm is going. We don’t know what the impacts are going to be.”

This article originally appeared in

Hurricane Dorian Brings Back Traumatic Memories for Anxious Puerto Ricans

MIAMI — Hurricane Dorian struck Puerto Rico with a glancing blow Wednesday, bringing back difficult memories as the first big storm to threaten the island since Hurricane Maria tore through two years ago.

The compact storm, which reached hurricane strength shortly before 2 p.m. Eastern time, has been maddeningly difficult to forecast, as tends to be the case with smaller, disorganized systems.

The National Weather Service said Wednesday evening that Dorian was pushing northwestward, away from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and that conditions were expected to improve in those places overnight. But dangerous winds remained possible, forecasters said, and flash flooding would be a threat through Thursday morning.

The Weather Service said the storm was likely to continue northwest for a time and then shift to a more westerly route toward the Bahamas and the U.S. mainland. But the specifics remained uncertain, and as of Wednesday evening, all of Florida’s east coast, along with part of Georgia, remained within the range of Dorian’s possible paths.

Puerto Ricans had feared that Dorian would be the first real test of Puerto Rico’s revamped electrical grid. Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 left the entire island without power. In some places, it took a year to restore electricity. The island’s electrical grid remains fragile and prone to power losses, though, and some problems were reported early Wednesday afternoon. Authorities say they have more supplies on hand to make repairs now than they did in 2017.

Unlike Maria, however, Dorian is bringing the island more rain than wind, according to the National Weather Service office in San Juan, Puerto Rico. “By now, everybody should be home,” Gov. Wanda Vázquez said in a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “This is not Maria. What we need to do is protect ourselves from the rain.”

Puerto Rico’s secretary of public safety, Elmer Román, urged residents to remain alert to danger after a man died Wednesday in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. The man, who was 80, fell from a ladder as he tried to reach his roof to clear drains ahead of the storm, El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s largest newspaper, reported.

“Let’s not let our guard down,” Román said.

Parts of the U.S. Virgin Islands lost power, and a curfew was imposed.

Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. of the U.S. Virgin Islands issued a territory-wide curfew that took effect at noon and extends through 6 a.m. Thursday. As the storm roared through the islands, their 105,000 residents hunkered down with memories fresh in mind of the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.

The Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority said Wednesday evening that crews were restoring power in areas of St. Thomas that were blacked out by the hurricane and were checking the electrical grid for damage throughout the islands. The agency said that many customers retained service during the storm.

The center of the storm was about 45 miles northwest of St. Thomas, one of the islands, at 5 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday. Earlier in the week, the hurricane’s projected path was farther west, and residents had not been expecting it to pass directly over St. Thomas; still, many had prepared, haunted by the devastation two summers ago.

“Although this is not a large hurricane, we’re in such a compromised position as it is,” said Stacey Plaskett, the Virgin Islands’ delegate to Congress, adding that nearly 3,000 homes on the islands were still in need of repair after the 2017 hurricanes. In a telephone interview from Christiansted, on St. Croix, she described seeing swaying trees and dark skies.

Plaskett said the islands’ two largest hospitals — on St. Thomas and St. Croix — were operating with half of their buildings damaged. On St. Croix, she said, only one operating room was open.

Plaskett said she had driven around St. Croix on Wednesday and seen many residents who were anxious about the storm because the 2017 hurricanes had been so traumatic. She said a number were staying with friends or relatives because their own homes were damaged.

Some of the private schools on the island had been scheduled to open for the academic year Wednesday, but the storm prompted them to postpone opening. Officials had already been concerned about whether the schools were ready to open, and now may need to reevaluate them after the weather settles down.

At a resort in St. Thomas, surprise at the storm’s fury.

Lorie Leonard, a manager at the Bolongo Bay Beach Resort on St. Thomas, said she and other employees were stunned by the power of the hurricane as it passed over the island. Palm trees toppled near the resort’s pool. Fans crashed to the resort restaurant’s floor. Branches smashed into cars. And water flooded the hotel and its beach, washing away all of its sand.

“It’s a mess,” Leonard repeated breathlessly Wednesday evening. “It was a lot of destruction in a very short period of time. It’s just crazy.

“They kept saying ‘Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico,’ but it was a direct hit on St. Thomas,” she said. We had nothing put away except our boat.”

By about 5:45 p.m., the storm had passed, and a light rain was falling on the resort as clouds whisked by overhead. But inside, it was all hands on deck, Leonard said.

Staffers and the hotel’s owners were trying to push water out of the building and scrambling to get dinner prepared for the 62 guests who had hustled to their rooms at the last minute as the hurricane approached. Everyone was safe, she said, but shaken.“It was that fast, that traumatic, that quick,” . Leonard said. “It’s like a river going through our beach.”

Florida is bracing for Dorian to hit as a Category 3 hurricane over the holiday weekend.

With all of Florida’s east coast inside the cone of Dorian’s potential path, officials in the state spent Wednesday watching the forecast nervously and encouraging residents to prepare for the storm, which could arrive as a Category 3 hurricane.

Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency Wednesday afternoon and advised Floridians to have seven days’ worth of supplies on hand. In St. Cloud, Florida, and Camden County, Georgia, officials began distributing sandbags. In Orange County, Florida, firefighters added metal shutters to their stations. And in Cocoa, Florida, city crews cleaned out storm drains.

Ken Graham, director of the National Hurricane Center, said the recent forecast shows that there is “the potential for a major hurricane on the Southeast coast, throughout Florida.”

Dorian is currently expected to reach land in Florida around 8 a.m. Monday, but the storm’s movements have been difficult to predict with precision, and forecasters said the range of possible landing zones is wide, anywhere from the southern tip of Florida through the northern edge of the Georgia coast.

Storm-force winds could come ashore sooner — perhaps as early as Saturday night — and may extend north through the South Carolina coast.

“That’s when you need to have things wrapped up, because it’s too dangerous to be outside,” Graham said. “You need to be prepared by then. Get your plans together.”

Mayor Lenny Curry of Jacksonville, a city that suffered heavy damage from flooding two years ago during Hurricane Irma, said the city was “a day or two” away from making a decision about whether to call for evacuations. The mayor said he did not know whether the football game between Florida State and Boise State, scheduled for Saturday evening in Jacksonville, would go ahead.

Regarding the storm, he said: “We’ve done this before. We’ve been through this together. This is no time to panic.”

In Miami-Dade County, Mayor Carlos Gimenez told residents who live in areas threatened by storm surge to fill their gas tanks and have an exit plan in case evacuations are ordered. He said the county had been in discussions about possibly opening shelters, but no decision had been made.

For now, Gimenez said, it remained a waiting game. The county government was operating mostly as normal, and a Rolling Stones concert planned for the holiday weekend remained on the schedule.

President Donald Trump continued his long-running dispute with Puerto Rico’s leaders.

As Dorian approached Puerto Rico, Trump continued his long-running verbal war with the island’s leaders on Wednesday in a series of Twitter messages. A day earlier, Trump approved a request for an emergency declaration, authorizing federal coordination of relief efforts and assistance.

“Puerto Rico is one of the most corrupt places on Earth,” Trump said in one post. “Their political system is broken and their politicians are either Incompetent or Corrupt.”

He singled out Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz of San Juan, with whom he sparred repeatedly after Hurricane Maria shredded parts of the island in 2017. Cruz responded with a Twitter post of her own.

Even after the emergency declaration, federal money for hurricane preparations remained an issue.

Democrats in Washington criticized the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday for transferring more than $150 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund to pay for temporary immigration courts at the southwest border.

And the Trump administration said this month that it would delay about $9 billion in disaster prevention funds intended for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, citing concerns over fiscal management.

Plaskett, the Virgin Islands’ delegate to Congress, said Wednesday that it was unfair to lump the Virgin Islands in with Puerto Rico, and said she was worried that the United States was forgetting about the islands she represents.

“We try to work with the federal government and not make waves, and it feels like it’s for naught,” she said. “We have a saying in the Virgin Islands that a closed mouth doesn’t get fed, but maybe making noise is the right thing to do.”

In Puerto Rico, operators say the 911 phone system is not ready for a disaster.

During Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico’s emergency communications system widely failed. Most people on the island could not even try to call 911, because landlines and cell service had been knocked out. Those could get through faced long waits for emergency workers and ambulances to arrive, because the dispatchers could not communicate with police stations.

The Communications Workers of Puerto Rico union says that Puerto Rico has yet to invest in upgrades to the system that failed so miserably. The government has not purchased the technology that would allow a 911 dispatcher to pinpoint a caller’s location, and has not replaced the dozens of dispatchers who have quit and left the island since 2017, according to Aramis Cruz, president of the local union.

The government did buy satellite phones for police, fire and ambulance stations, but Cruz said the 911 operators have yet to be given the numbers of those phones. “They are scrambling right now to get us those,” Cruz said.

The lack of prompt ambulance service has been cited as one reason for the soaring death toll in Puerto Rico in the months after Hurricane Maria. George Washington University researchers estimated that as many as 3,000 more people died on the island in that period than would have been expected in normal conditions.

The communication workers’ union says the government diverted funds from the 911 system for other uses, leaving the system unable to fill vacancies or buy the right technology.

Cruz said the agency also lacks up-to-date maps. The ones it is using date from 2010, he said, and do not include many newer highways and subdivisions. If someone calls 911 from one development built in the last five years, he said, “I look at my computer, and it shows a mountain.”

The Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety did not respond to several telephone and email messages left on Tuesday and Wednesday seeking comment.

Hurricane Dorian: Category 1 Storm Hits Virgin Islands

Hurricane Dorian hit the U.S. Virgin Islands on Wednesday and then moved northwestward, where warm Atlantic waters were expected to strengthen it into a major storm threatening the southeastern United States. The storm’s winds and heavy rains extended into the British Virgin Islands to the east and parts of Puerto Rico to the west, including the island municipality of Culebra. But the main island of Puerto Rico was spared a direct hit.

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Patricia Mazzei, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Mitch Smith

Articles written by the author

Hurricane Dorian Brings Back Traumatic Memories for Anxious Puerto Ricans

Hurricane Dorian: Category 1 Storm Hits Virgin Islands