https://ift.tt/OXb0R76 growing number of businesses, including grocery stores and gas stations, are temporarily closing across Puerto Rico as power outages caused by Hurricane Fiona drag on in the U.S. territory, sparking concern about the availability of fuel and basic goods.
Handwritten signs warning of closures have been popping up more frequently, eliciting sighs and groans from customers on an island where nearly 60% of 1.47 million clients still do not have power five days after the storm hit.
Betty Merced, a retiree who lives in the southern coastal city of Salinas, said she has spent several days without success looking for diesel to fill her generator. She uses a sleep apnea machine and cannot risk going without it.
“There are a lot of people with a lot of needs,” she said. “If there is no diesel, we’re going to be very much in harm’s way.”
Merced said she would travel to the nearby town of Santa Isabel on Friday, and if she doesn’t find diesel there, she will drive more than an hour to the northern city of Caguas, where at least one convenience store had a “No gas” sign on its door Thursday evening.
“I didn’t think we were going to be so many days without power,” she said.
Gasoline also was unavailable in Salinas after all gas stations shut down Wednesday, said community leader Wanda Rios Colorado.
“When I saw that, my stomach almost turned,” she said, adding that it gave her flashbacks of Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm that hit Puerto Rico in September 2017, resulting in nearly 3,000 deaths and sparking severe shortages of fuel, food, water and cash.