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Sodden Hortense Leaves 8 Dead In Puerto RicoTorrential Rains Lead To Floods, OutagesBy William BoothWashington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 11 1996; Page A03 © The Washington Post
The hurricane, the eighth named storm of the season and coming fast on the heels of Hurricane Fran, was wreaking havoc across the U.S. territory not so much for its relatively light winds of 80 mph but for its intense rains, which flooded roads and rivers, causing mudslides, carving out hillsides and carrying homes away. Among the dead was a 2-year-old who was buried in a mudslide in the city of Guayama on the island's south coast not far from where Hortense first hit. Two young sisters were swept away by raging waters as their father tried to save them, according to local residents. In addition to the known dead, police in the capital of San Juan said eight or nine people were missing in the havoc caused by the hurricane. Some 6,000 people were being housed tonight in shelters throughout the island, according to Washington Post special correspondent William Santiago, reporting from San Juan. When rescuers reached a house where three families had taken refuge, they found four children and a man huddling together. Five other adults and a child were missing. Rescuers were applauded by neighbors as a baby was brought to safety from the house. In San Juan, the highways were more like rivers, as water, chest-high in some places, swirled past stalled cars dotting the roads like giant boulders. "The big thing about this one is it is a very, very wet storm," said Mike Hopkins, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center here. "Things are pretty grim down there. Roads impassable, widespread flooding, power out." The heaviest rain and thunderstorms are clustered around the east side of Hortense -- and so despite the fact that the storm's eye missed most of the island, its waterfall did not. In a televised news conference that few saw because of massive electrical outages, Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Rossello said that more than 18 inches of rain had fallen in some areas and that 90 percent of Puerto Rico's 3.6 million people were without electricity and potable water, Santiago reported. Officials said they hoped to have electricity and water restored to half the island by Wednesday but it could take much longer for the rest, Santiago reported. Rossello said he was asking President Clinton for federal disaster assistance to cope with the devastation. "We have no electricity. We have no water. We are having an awful time," said Angel Rodriguez, the assistant manager of the La Concha Hotel in San Juan, reached by telephone. "There is a lot of flooding, a lot of it -- like North Carolina." Rossello said that the island's agriculture had been heavily damaged, in particular the plantain, citrus and coffee crops. Rossello estimated the damage at $127 million, far worse than the damage estimate made at the same point in 1989 when Hugo, a much deadlier hurricane, slammed into the island. The Coast Guard reported seas running as high as 30 feet off the coast; it dispatched rescue helicopters and a cutter to search for the sailing vessel Desert Wind, reported without sails and tossed on heavy seas east of the island. The Guard had received no reports of maritime fatalities as of tonight. Navy rescuers plucked 11 struggling crew members from the freighter Isabella, which was foundering off the island's east coast. Forecasters at the hurricane center said Hortense, after crossing the Mona Passage, was skirting along the northeast coast of the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola. The winds were barely hurricane strength -- at 75 mph -- but the storm was still heavy with rain. The Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeastern Bahamas were under a hurricane warning. At 11 p.m., the hurricane's center was about 35 miles north-northwest of Cabo Samana on the northwest coast of the Dominican Republic and was moving northwest at about 10 mph. Next in its path would be Turks Island, forecasters said. Forecasters and their computers here suggested that Hortense will move along the eastern edge of the Bahamas in a northwesterly direction and then turn more northward, passing about 400 miles offshore of Florida on Friday, when the storm was predicted to be 800 miles south of New York City. Longer-term forecasts are not yet accurate enough to predict a possible landfall -- or a sigh of relief -- for the U.S. East Coast. Emergency officials in Puerto Rico warned that it could take several days to reach isolated areas, where more dead could be found.
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