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Maria: Entire island of Puerto Rico loses electricity as hurricane causes major flooding - as it happened

Storm hits days after Hurricane Irma devastates Caribbean

Samuel Osborne,Andrew Buncombe
Wednesday 20 September 2017 12:04 BST
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Satellite imagery shows Hurricane Maria gaining strength

Hurricane Maria has made landfall on Puerto Rico with maximum sustained winds of 155mph.

The US National Hurricane Centre said the eye of the Category 4 storm came ashore over the Yabucoa area.

Maria battered the US Virgin Island of St Croix and killed at least one person in the French territory of Guadeloupe and devastated the tiny island nation of Dominica.

The storm hit just days after the region was punched by Hurricane Irma, which ranked as one of the most powerful Atlantic storms on record and left a trail of destruction on several Caribbean islands and the Florida Keys.

The hurricane centre has hurricane warnings and watches out for the US and British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Culebra, and Vieques, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the southeastern Bahamas and the Dominican Republic from Cabo Engano to Puerto Plata.

Earlier this month, Irma devastated several small islands, including Barbuda and the US and British Virgin Islands, and caused heavy damage in Cuba and Florida, killing at least 84 people in the Caribbean and the US mainland.

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