CAGUAS, Puerto Rico — A 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. Hand-written 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 looking for diesel to fill up her generator to no avail. 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 Ríos 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. People also have struggled to get their prescriptions as some pharmacies temporarily close. Puerto Rico’s Department of Consumer Affairs said there is no shortage of fuel, but rather a disruption to the system as a result of flooding, landslides and an island-wide power outage caused by Fiona when it slammed into Puerto Rico’s southwestern corner Sunday as a Category 1 storm.
Some fuel stations were unable to reopen or could not be refilled in the storm’s early aftermath, officials said.
Consumer Affairs Secretary Edan Rivera sought to temper concerns, saying that “there is no basis to talk about a fuel shortage in Puerto Rico.” He added that his agency also has found sufficient supplies of basic goods.