Storm expected to hit Puerto Rico as a hurricane on Wednesday, while much of Barbados is shut down

Tropical Storm Dorian gathered strength and hurtled toward Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic on Tuesday, threatening to hit at near-hurricane strength.

The storm is expected to make landfall in Puerto Rico on Wednesday, just shy of two years since Hurricane Maria devastated the US territory. The death toll from the disaster is estimated at between 2,975 and 4,645, and survivors are still facing the lasting effects.

Puerto Rico’s governor, Wanda Vazquez, has declared a state of emergency and provided a list of all the new equipment that public agencies have bought since Hurricane Maria.

“I want everyone to feel calm,” she said. “Agency directors have prepared for the last two years. The experience of Maria has been a great lesson for everyone.”

Elsewhere, the National Hurricane Center issued tropical storm warnings for Martinique, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines. The center said the storm has maximum sustained winds near 50mph and is forecast to strengthen during the next 48 hours before whacking Puerto Rico.

“Dorian is forecast to be a hurricane when it moves near Puerto Rico and eastern Hispaniola,” the center said.

The storm was expected to dump three to eight inches of rain in the Windward islands, with isolated amounts of 10 inches.

Much of Barbados shut down as Dorian approached and authorities urged residents to remain indoors amid reports of electrical outages and other minor incidents.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Storm clouds gather as Tropical Storm Dorian moves toward St Michael Parish, Barbados, Monday. Photograph: Chris Brandis/AP

The minister of home affairs Edmund Hinkson said Tuesday that Dorian “is said to be weakening and that is great news, but we are not out of danger yet”.

In St Lucia, prime minister Allen Chastanet said “we are expecting the worst”. He had announced that everything on the island of nearly 179,000 people would shut down Monday evening ahead of the storm, but it remained below hurricane strength early Tuesday.

In Puerto Rico, hundreds of people have been crowding into grocery stores and gas stations to prepare for Dorian, buying food, water and generators, among other things.

Many are worried about power outages and heavy rains. Some 30,000 homes still have blue tarps as roofs and the electrical grid remains fragile and prone to outages even during brief rain showers, following the category four Hurricane Maria’s onslaught in 2017.



The US senators Marco Rubio and Rich Scott have urged Donald Trump to approve Puerto Rico request for a pre-landfall emergency declaration. “Puerto Ricans are still in the process of recovering from Hurricane Maria … as Tropical Storm Dorian approaches, the state and federal government must effectively coordinate in order to help reduce the potential loss of life and destruction of property,” they wrote in a join letter.

Preparations for the hurricane come as the Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that it was moving $271m from other agencies such as Fema and the US coast guard to increase the number of beds for detained immigrants and support its policy forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases play out.

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, criticized the move in light of the impending storm. “Stealing from appropriated funds is always unacceptable, but to pick the pockets of disaster relief funding in order to fund an appalling, inhumane family incarceration plan is staggering and to do so on the eve of hurricane season is stunningly reckless,” she said.

Puerto Rico’s Vazquez has urged people to stay in one of the island’s 360 shelters if needed. Officials also said they would close all public schools by Tuesday afternoon.

Jesus Laracuente, a 52-year-old construction worker who lives in the impoverished neighborhood of Las Monjas in the capital of San Juan, had his doubts about the government preparations. Blue tarps are still visible in his community, which can flood even in light rainstorms.

“The people here are prepared. We already learned our lesson,” he said, referring to Maria. “What despairs us is knowing that the slightest breeze will leave us without power. It’s the government that fails us.”