As Tropical Storm Dorian loomed to its southeast on Tuesday, Puerto Rico braced for the possibility that it would sideswipe the island, with the authorities declaring an emergency, closing schools early and preparing emergency shelter for tens of thousands of people.
Though the latest forecasts suggested that Puerto Rico may be spared a direct hit, the island’s leaders sought to assure its 3.2 million people that they would not be caught underestimating Dorian, especially after the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.
“I want everyone to feel calm,” Gov. Wanda Vázquez said as she declared a state of emergency on Monday evening. “Agency heads have prepared for the past two years. The experience of Maria has been a great lesson for everyone.”
Dorian is expected to strengthen over the warm waters of the Caribbean and to brush the southwest part of Puerto Rico Wednesday night, before making landfall on the eastern end of the Dominican Republic, according to forecasters at the National Hurricane Center. Even if the storm’s strongest winds bypass Puerto Rico, the storm could still soak parts of the island with as much as 6 inches of rain.
On Tuesday morning, the storm system was dumping heavy rain on the Windward Islands of the eastern Caribbean, with maximum sustained winds of about 50 miles an hour. The islands include Martinique, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The storm was moving west-northwest at about 13 miles an hour, on a path that could eventually bring high winds and rainfall to the Bahamas and Florida later this week and over the weekend.
In Puerto Rico, public schools were told to close at 1 p.m. Tuesday, and some 360 shelters would open around the island to house up to 49,000 people, Ms. Vázquez’s administration said on Monday.
She also ordered a price freeze in an effort to prevent price gouging for fuel and other supplies, and announced a list of new disaster response equipment that had been bought, including satellite telephones for the public power utility. Ms Vázquez also said aid contracts had been signed in case there were widespread power disruptions like the ones that kept the entire island in the dark after Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm, in 2017.
The storm is an early challenge for Ms. Vázquez, the former justice secretary who assumed the governorship three weeks ago after a popular uprising ousted Ricardo A. Rosselló, the governor during the devastating 2017 hurricane season. The protests began as a demonstration against the weak economy, graft scandals and a callous response to Hurricane Maria. It ended up toppling the government in just two weeks.
