Miguel Cruz awoke to the descent of Hurricane Maria on his home on Wednesday morning when the massive storm peeled off most of the roof, sent his belongings flying in all directions, but left intact an icon of Jesus hanging above his bed, APAreports quoting Reuters.
Cruz was one of thousands of Puerto Ricans picking through the wreckage left by Maria after the hurricane devastated basic services on the debt-laden U.S. territory, pitching most of its 3.4 million residents into darkness as night fell.
Crashing into Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, Maria flipped the tops off buildings, knocked out phones and electricity across the island and turned low-lying roads into swollen rivers awash with debris.
“I was terrified. I prayed to God that the door and windows wouldn’t open,” said Sonja Alvarez, 52, who spent 10 hours shut in a bedroom with her family while Maria raged outside. “But there came a point when I thought they would.”
Trees were torn apart, windows shattered and exposed homes turned inside out by Maria, which killed at least one man, who was struck by a piece of flying lumber. The storm also killed at least nine elsewhere in the Caribbean.
By 11 p.m. EDT (0300 GMT), Maria was drifting away from Puerto Rico. The slowing storm was blowing maximum sustained winds of 110 mph (175 kph) and was 55 miles (90 km) off the eastern tip of the Dominican Republic, the National Hurricane Center said.
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