By Anthony Faiola, Lindsey Never and Andrew deGrandpre, WorldViews, September 9, 2017<\/p>\n
CABARET, Haiti \u2014 Hurricane Jose, a powerhouse tropical cyclone barreling northwest toward the Caribbean islands\u00a0hammered by\u00a0Hurricane Irma\u00a0earlier this week, is now \u201calmost a Category 5\u201d storm, officials said late Friday.<\/p>\n
The National Hurricane Center at 11 a.m. Friday said that Jose had reached maximum sustained wind speeds of 155 mph, which would be just shy of a Category 5 storm. Subsequent bulletins on\u00a0Saturday morning indicated Jose\u2019s maximum wind speed decreased\u00a0slightly to 150 mph, with some gusts blowing higher. Though still a Category 4 system, \u201csome fluctuation in intensity, up or down, could occur during the next 24 hours,\u201d forecasters said.<\/p>\n
A hurricane warning is in effect for Barbuda, Anguilla, St. Martin and St. Barthelemy, also known as St. Barts. The island of Antigua is under a hurricane watch.<\/p>\n
Once it passes the northern Leeward Islands, Jose is projected to hook north and steadily lose muscle. It will, however, likely throw off tropical-storm strength weather felt Saturday night in the British and U.S. Virgin Islands, which also sustained heavy damage during Irma.<\/p>\n
The alarming announcement comes as military personnel and emergency responders from the United States and Europe rush to aid those still reeling from Irma, which roared across the same region as a Category 5 storm Wednesday.<\/p>\n
On the devastated island of Barbuda, authorities and private tour operators scrambled to evacuate the remainder of its 1,600 residents, taking them to emergency shelters on nearby Antigua.<\/p>\n
Michael Joseph, president of the Red Cross in Antigua and Barbuda, described Barbuda as though it were a tropical ghost town of broken buildings and fallen trees.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s uninhabitable. I would literally say that 100\u00a0percent of the infrastructure is gone. Light, water, communication, it\u2019s a total blackout,\u201d Joseph said.<\/p>\n
There was only one fatality on the island \u2014 a 2-year-old boy identified Friday as Carl Junior Francis. He was found by neighbors the day prior, having been swept away by storm surge as Irma pounded the island\u00a0and ripped off the roof of his family’s home, the Associated Press reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a miracle that there was only one death,\u201d Joseph\u00a0said.<\/p>\n
[Hurricane Irma will batter Florida and \u2018devastate the United States,\u2019 officials warn<\/a>] <\/i><\/p>\n On Antigua, evacuees were hunkered down and preparing for Jose\u2019s possible hit.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are worried, when they see images of Barbuda, that it could be Antigua next,\u201d Joseph said.<\/p>\n In Anguilla, part of the British West Indies, Irma\u2019s fury left homes and businesses shattered across the 16-mile island. Local officials pleaded with residents<\/a> Friday to take all precautions ahead of Jose to ensure their survival, and they encouraged people to quickly clear existing debris so it could be removed and battened down, as\u00a0not to pose a threat during the next wave of dangerous weather.<\/p>\n With telecommunication services severed,\u00a0police traveled the island\u2019s neighborhoods Friday to relay what information they had about Jose\u2019s path, said Patrick Lynch, who operates Roy\u2019s Bayside Grill. Reached Friday afternoon via Facebook, he seemed unaware the storm had reached such\u00a0ferocious strength.<\/p>\n Though badly damaged, the restaurant was planning to open Friday and serve limited lunch and dinner items. \u201cPeople need a place to go, connect, talk about what has happened and feel normal for an hour or two,\u201d Lynch said, \u201cso we\u2019re going to try and provide that.<\/p>\n In closing, he wrote: \u201cPlease keep Anguilla in the news, the destruction is island wide. The people here are good and friendly. \u2026 It is a jewel in the Caribbean, and it needs help.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. military has dispatched five warships, as well as helicopters, cargo planes, National Guard troops and thousands of pounds of supplies to help hurricane victims.<\/p>\n The military will provide generators, fuel and gas, water-purification systems and tools to clear roads choked with storm debris, according to the U.S. Northern Command. The Army Corps of Engineers sent teams to U.S. territories to help restore electricity, and National Guard personnel were activated to help with evacuations and search-and-rescue efforts.<\/p>\n The Federal Emergency Management Agency spoke of a \u201ccomplete power\/communications collapse\u201d in the U.S. Virgin Islands, but people trapped there have become frustrated and despondent.<\/p>\n Amy Larson, who runs a charter-boat business in the U.S. Virgin Islands, said she has been in Florida as her husband weathered Irma\u2019s wrath on St. John. In tears, she said, \u201cPeople are very concerned. They want to get off the island. They need supplies. They don\u2019t feel like anybody is giving them any sort of attention.\u201d<\/p>\n [Isolated by Irma, British Virgin Islands don\u2019t know what will come first \u2014 help or Hurricane Jose<\/a>] <\/i><\/p>\n France and the Netherlands also moved to respond to some of Irma\u2019s worst destruction on St. Martin, an island they share, and St. Barts, a French overseas territory.\u00a0The French government deployed 455 police, military and other personnel on Friday, with double that number expected by Saturday.<\/p>\n The presence was partly to restore public order and combat a wave of looting. Using Guadeloupe as a base, French officials were dispatching military helicopters and civilian aircraft with food, water and medical supplies.<\/p>\n Yet Jose could quickly jeopardize those relief efforts, authorities warned.<\/p>\n \u201cMy concern today is that because of Hurricane Jose, we are going to have another period in which transport won\u2019t be operating,\u201d the French health minister, Agn\u00e8s Buzyn, told French TV. Kenneth E. Mapp, the governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, said that Jose\u2019s rain and winds could linger through Sunday or Monday.<\/p>\n At the White House on Friday, President Trump\u2019s homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, indicated the U.S. had begun evacuating American citizens from the French and Dutch sides of St. Martin ahead of Jose.<\/p>\n Gretchen and Peter Bogacz have been hunkered down since Wednesday at St. Martin\u2019s Hotel L\u2019Esplanade. With no power or running water, they were desperate for information about whether assistance was on the way.<\/p>\n The couple had been heading back to Florida after celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary on the nearby island of Saba. Once Irma cleared St. Martin, they used their intermittent cell service to text relatives back in the United States for help in figuring out how to get home.<\/p>\n But with the airport seriously damaged, there was no way out.<\/p>\n \u201cNow it seems we are trapped on this island,\u201d Gretchen Bogacz wrote in a text message to The Post Friday afternoon. \u201cFood is okay for now but will be getting low in a few days. Doesn\u2019t help to know another … hurricane is heading this way.\u201d<\/p>\n In the British Virgin Islands, residents said they lacked information on aid and relief efforts. Communications were mostly down and many roads were blocked with vehicles, telephone poles, metal roof material and other debris.<\/p>\n Freeman Rogers, editor of the weekly BVI Beacon newspaper and a resident of Road Town, the territory\u2019s capital, said that people at shelters were running low on food and water, clean clothes and medical supplies. He described a sense of frustration about the response by the British government. Prime Minister Theresa May has said that British military personnel have been working \u201cround the clock\u201d to provide relief to the battered islands.<\/p>\n Rogers said residents were most concerned about whether Hurricane Jose would cause further damage.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople don\u2019t have roofs,\u201d he said in a telephone interview. \u201cIt\u2019d be really rough if we got hit with another big hurricane.\u201d<\/p>\n [What\u2019s in the path of Hurricane Irma<\/a>] <\/i><\/p>\n Irma, meanwhile, continued to push west, making landfall in Cuba around 11 p.m. Eastern Friday and gaining strength on its march toward the Bahamas and, eventually, Florida.<\/p>\n The Cuban government moved hundreds of thousands of people away from cities and towns along the coast in preparation for Irma, including some 36,000 tourists from hotels and beach resorts that are likely to be pounded.<\/p>\n While Havana is expected to be spared the worst of Irma\u2019s wrath, cities such as Ciego de Avila and Santa Clara in the island\u2019s central provinces appear at risk of significant damage. State media showed images Friday of soldiers and Cuban civil defense brigades moving residents into shelters.<\/p>\n The government said it had prepared at least 39 caves for use as emergency shelters. Children and elderly residents could be seen in them, eating sandwiches and snacks in the near-darkness.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are being quite orderly in terms of leaving their homes and going to safer shelters,\u201d said Richard Paterson, the Cuba representative for Care International in Havana.<\/p>\n And as the rains diminished over vulnerable Haiti, residents and aid organizations began to assess the damage.<\/p>\n In the city of Cabaret, 16 miles northwest of Port-au-Prince, Miracle Lafontant, 82, wearily exited her inundated home midday Friday in a ripped and muddied white nightgown.<\/p>\n A devout Christian, she\u2019s a rice farmer who has taken in three orphans \u2014 including a teenage girl who lost her mother last year in Hurricane Matthew.<\/p>\n \u201cI was in bed, and I heard, \u2018Mommy, wake up, the water is coming in!\u2019\u00a0\u201d Lafontant said. \u201cI got out of bed, but before I could get out the door, it was already up to here,\u201d she said, indicating her upper abdomen.<\/p>\n Behind her home, fields of banana trees and sugar cane obscured rows of flooded houses.<\/p>\n \u201cThe storm, she took all my church clothes, ruined,\u201d Lafontant said. \u201cWhat am I going to wear to church now?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut I\u2019m not scared. I am never scared,\u201d she said. \u201cThe Lord Jesus Christ was there with me last night.\u201d<\/p>\n Bever and deGrandpre reported from Washington. Nick Miroff, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Matea Gold in Washington, Rachelle Krygier in Caracas, Venezuela, and Annabell Van den Berghe in Brussels contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n The terrifying worst case scenario for Southeast Florida in Hurricane Irma<\/a><\/p>\n