Fiona, a tropical storm, is
headed towards Puerto Rico, Reuters reported. The United States National
Hurricane Center (NHC) has sounded a hurricane warning and issued alerts for “life
threatening floods and mudslides.” Puerto Rico is a Caribbean island and an
unincorporated territory of the United States.

Fiona is currently located
115 kilometres southeast of St. Croix with maximum sustained winds of 95
kilometres per hour as of late afternoon, the NHC said. The tropical storm is
expected to turn into a hurricane on Sunday and move near Puerto Rico on Sunday
night. A storm is regarded as a Category 1 hurricane with sustained windspeeds of
119 kmph or over.

Also Read | Tropical storm Fiona: All you need to know

Fiona is expected to bring flooding,
mudslides and power outages. “Hurricane conditions are expected across portions
of Puerto Rico Sunday and Sunday night, and are possible across the US Virgin
Islands (Saturday night) and Sunday,” the NHC said.

The tropical storm is also
expected to bring heavy rain in the Dominican Republic on Sunday and to the
Turks and Caicos Islands Monday night.

Puerto Rico’s power
infrastructure has remained fragile since Hurricane Maria in 2017. Many Puerto
Ricans spent Saturday apprehending major power outages. When Hurricane Maria hit
Puerto Rico five years ago, it led to the largest blackout in United States
history. One and a half million people were left without power as nearly 80% of
power lines got knocked out.

Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi
signed a state of emergency on Saturday and said: “We should not underestimate
this storm in the least. The government is active and prepared to respond to
the emergency.”

“We expect that during the
night, the winds and rains will intensify. We all want the (electric) service
to improve but now what is important is the response,” Pierluisi said.

A spokesperson for LUMA Energy,
the company that operates Puerto Rico’s power grid, told Reuters that the storm
will cause outages, “but we will be ready to respond.”

“The same thing that happened
during Maria is not going to happen here,” he added.