Tropical Storm Ernesto drenches Puerto Rico on northern track

About 375,000 homes and businesses were in the dark in Puerto Rico after Tropical Storm Ernesto passed early Wednesday, battering the island with torrential rain and winds. The storm is likely to become a hurricane in the next few hours as it moves north towards Bermuda.

Ernesto was about 85 miles (135 kilometers) north-northwest of San Juan by 5 a.m. local time, the US National Hurricane Center said in an advisory. About 25 percent of the nearly 1.5 million customers of local utility Luma Energy were without service at 7:20 a.m. local time.

Maximum sustained winds were about 70 miles per hour Wednesday, just shy of a Category 1 hurricane. It could become a major hurricane — Category 3 or higher — in the coming days, the NHC said.

Ernesto — the fifth named Atlantic storm since 2024 — will drop up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain on parts of the island, according to the center. Coastal flooding is possible in areas including eastern Puerto Rico and the neighboring US Virgin Islands.

President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration Tuesday evening local time, allowing federal assistance to supplement local efforts in the US community.

Puerto Rico has suffered a series of powerful storms in recent years that have repeatedly damaged its fragile power grid and disrupted its economy. 2017’s Hurricane Maria killed more than 2,900 people, caused about $90 billion in damage and left many residents without power for months. Hurricane Fiona triggered another island blackout in 2022.

The community’s 3.2 million residents suffer chronic outages even in calm weather due to the poor state of the power grid. They also pay some of the highest electricity rates in the US. Luma Energy, a US-Canadian consortium, manages the grid and is tasked with upgrading and strengthening the system’s infrastructure, but progress has been slow.

Ahead of the storm, Luma activated its emergency operations centers on Monday, mobilized more than 1,100 utility workers and began cooperating with island mayors and local and federal partners, said Juan Saca, Luma’s executive director, in – a press release.

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