CAYEY, Puerto Rico • Hurricane Fiona blasted the Turks and Caicos Islands on Tuesday as a Category 3 storm after devastating Puerto Rico, where most people remained without electricity or running water and rescuers used heavy equipment to lift survivors to safety.

The storm’s eye passed close to Grand Turk, the small British territory’s capital island, on Tuesday morning after the government imposed a curfew and urged people to flee flood-prone areas. Storm surge could raise water levels there by as much as 5 to 8 feet above normal, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

Late Tuesday afternoon, the storm was centered about 50 miles north of North Caicos Island, with hurricane-force winds extending up to 30 miles from the center.

Premier Washington Misick urged people to evacuate. “Storms are unpredictable,” he said in a statement from London, where he had attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. “You must therefore take every precaution to ensure your safety.”

Fiona had maximum sustained winds of 115 mph and was moving north-northwest at 8 mph, according to the Hurricane Center, which said the storm was likely to strengthen into a Category 4 hurricane as it approaches Bermuda on Friday. Rain was still lashing parts of Puerto Rico on Tuesday, where the sounds of people scraping, sweeping and spraying their homes and streets echoed across rural areas as historic floodwaters began to recede.

In the central mountain town of Cayey, where the Plato River burst its banks and the brown torrent of water consumed cars and homes, overturned dressers, beds and large refrigerators lay strewn in people’s yards Tuesday.

“Puerto Rico is not prepared for this, or for anything,” said Mariangy Hernández, a 48-year-old housewife, who said she doubted the government would help her community of some 300 in the long term, despite efforts to clear the streets and restore power. “This is only for a couple of days and later they forget about us.”

She and her husband were stuck in line waiting for the National Guard to clear a landslide in their hilly neighborhood. “Is it open? Is it open?” one driver asked, worried that the road might have been completely closed.

Other drivers asked the National Guard if they could swing by their homes to help cut trees or clear clumps of mud and debris.

The cleanup efforts occurred on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Maria, which hit as a Category 4 storm in 2017 and knocked out power for a year in parts of Cayey.

Jeannette Soto, a 34-year-old manicurist, worried it would take a long time for crews to restore power because a landslide swept away the neighborhood’s main light post.

“It’s the first time this happens,” she said of the landslides. “We didn’t think the magnitude of the rain was going to be so great.”

Gov. Pedro Pierluisi requested a major disaster declaration on Tuesday and said it would be at least a week before authorities have an estimate of the damage that Fiona caused.

He said the damage caused by the rain was “catastrophic,” especially in the island’s central, south and southeast regions.

“The impact caused by the hurricane has been devastating for many people,” he said.

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency traveled to Puerto Rico on Tuesday as the agency announced it was sending hundreds of additional personnel to boost local response efforts.

Neighbors work to recover their belongings Tuesday after the flooding caused by Hurricane Fiona in the Los Sotos neighborhood of Higüey, Dominican Republic.

the associated press