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<\/a>NWS Declares “Extremely Dangerous Situation” After Puerto Rico Dam Fails<\/p><\/div>\n
A dam in northwest Puerto Rico is failing, causing flash flooding and prompting emergency evacuations Friday, the National Weather Service said.<\/p>\n
Operators of the Guajataca Dam said it failed at 2:10 p.m. ET, prompting the NWS to issue a flash flood emergency warning for Isabela and Quebradillas municipalities, home to some 70,000 people,\u00a0the agency said in tweets that went unseen by many in the blacked-out coastal area.<\/p>\n
“This is an EXTREMELY DANGEROUS SITUATION. Busses are currently evacuating people from the area as quickly as they can,” NWS San Juan said.<\/p>\n
A flash flood warning has been put in place for eastern Isabela and western Quebradillas until 2 a.m. NWS San Juan is telling residents along the Guajataca River to “seek higher ground now!”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Details remained sketchy about the evacuation with communications hampered after the storm.\u00a0The 345-yard (316-meter) dam holds back a manmade lake covering about 2 square miles and was built decades ago, U.S. government records show.<\/p>\n “This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation. Do not attempt to travel unless you are fleeing an area subject to flooding or under an evacuation order,” an alert on the NWS website said.<\/p>\n The island is still reeling from a direct hit by Hurricane Maria, knocking out power and communications to most of the island.<\/p>\n Officials said 1,360 of the island’s 1,600 cell-phone towers had been downed, and 85 percent of above-ground and underground phone and internet cables were knocked out. With roads blocked and phones dead, officials said, the situation may be worse than they know.<\/p>\n Federal reservoir data show that the lake behind the dam, Lago de Guajataca, rose more than three feet between Tuesday and Wednesday, when the hurricane hit as a Category 4 storm. More recent data were unavailable.<\/p>\n The dam was built in 1929 by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and is used for drinking water and irrigation. It had a capacity of 11 billion gallons in 1999,\u00a0according to the U.S. Geological Survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n Danica Coto of The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p>\n