The Basse-Terre hospital center said that this shortage compromised its proper functioning and continuity of care. Fiona, which has become category 3 hurricane, is now approaching Turkish-and-Caican islands where the population is called to confine themselves.
Le Monde with AFP
Guadeloupe is struggling to recover from the passage of Fiona. Tuesday, September 20, three days after torrential rains caused by the storm which has become, in the meantime, a hurricane of category 3 out of 5, nearly 60,000 customers (individuals or companies) were still deprived of water, including the Center Hospitalier de Lower -Terre (CHBT) who said that this shortage compromised its proper functioning and continuity of care.
The establishment reported in a press release a possible “leakage of pipes”, specifying that “a crisis cell had been set up in order to take emergency measures”. According to the CHBT, the Guadeloupe prefecture “makes every effort in order to supply the water hospital.” “It is the absolute need to maintain the interventions and other emergency acts programmed within the establishment, “he said.
The CHBT is not the only one to know difficulties of access to water. Thus “58,618 customers” were still deprived of this on Tuesday, according to the mixed water management union and sanitation of Guadeloupe (SMGEAG). This represents almost 32 % of the estimated customers of the organization. They were, on Sunday, more than 100,000 without water, according to the data published by the SMGEAG crisis cell.
“Very big work is to be expected” for the restoration of the water network, said the SMGEAG, evoking at least “several weeks” before a return to normal.
Five dead
In normal times, many municipalities on the island are subject to solidarity water towers – consisting in cutting the water from one neighborhood to supply another – due to the obsolescence of the distribution network and Many leaks that cause massive losses of drinking water. The former public management was replaced in September 2021 by the SMGEAG to try to resolve the question of water.
In the wake of Fiona, a man died in Guadeloupe, swept away with his house by the waves of a flood river. Two people died in the Dominican Republic and two others in Puerto Rico.
Fiona, the first major category 3 hurricane of the season with its winds now blowing up to 185 km/h, approached Turkish-and-Caica islands on Tuesday. All the inhabitants of this overseas British territory, where violent winds and heavy rains are already falling -they could bring up to 20 cm of precipitation in places -are called upon by the authorities to confine themselves. Sudden potentially deadly floods are indeed to fear, warns in its latest bulletin the National Hurricane Center (NHC), based in Miami (Florida).