Most Puerto Ricans still without power, many sleeping outdoors after quakes

Two-thirds ofPuertoRicansremainedwithoutpowerand nearly a quarter lacked drinking water on Wednesdayafterearthquakesbattered the Caribbean island, including themostpowerful to strike the USterritory in 102 years.

Thequakes, including one of magnitude 6.4 on Tuesday, killed at least one person and destroyed or damaged some 300 homes, provoking a state of emergency on the island of 3 million people and the activation of the National Guard.

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The south of the island was hardest hit, with dozens of homes collapsing in towns like Yauco, Guanica, and Guayanilla.

Thousands prepared to spend another nightsleepingoutdoors, fearful their houses might fall down if there was another major quake.

"Manyapartments collapsed, everything was lost in some houses," said Yauco resident Luiz Cruz Aponte, standing in a community parking lot filled with cots, mattresses, and shelters for people who had lost or fled their homes.

About 500,000 of the island's 1.5 million customers had electricity on Wednesday, up from 100,000 on Tuesday night, and the island was generating 955 megawatts of electricity, thepowerauthority AEE said, well short of demand of around 2,300 megawatts.

Thepoweroutages evoked memories of theaftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017 whenPuertoRicansendured lengthy blackouts following a disaster that killed nearly 3,000 people.

About 24 per cent of the population had no running water and more than 2,200 people left homeless had taken refuge in government shelters, said Carlos Acevedo, commissioner of disaster agency NMEAD.

In Guanica, supermarket owner Santo Manuel Ruiz Pietri began cleaning up collapsed shelves and surveying structural damage to his building.

"It was nearly complete devastation at our Guanica location, inside and outside," said Ruiz Pietri, estimating the damage to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Public health emergency

The earthquakesfollowed a series of natural and man-made disasters to afflict the USterritory in recent years. The island is also going through bankruptcy and its former governor resigned amid a political scandal and massive street protests last year.

USPresident Donald Trump on Tuesday declared an emergency inPuertoRico and authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief withPuertoRican officials.

The USDepartment of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency on the island to ensure local hospitals had funding to meet medical needs.

Powerand water returned to some areas of the capital, San Juan, but resident Luis Borri had neither at his home. He said he got a message from the AEE that electricity services for all customers would not resume until the weekend.

More than 500 earthquakesoccurred in the south of the island between December28 and Tuesday, including 32 greater than magnitude 4, putting the USterritory's biggestpowerplant out of service and damaging energy infrastructure.

The 6.4 magnitude earthquake on Tuesday morning was themostpowerful to hitPuertoRico since 1918, when a 7.3 magnitude quake and tsunami killed 116 people, according to thePuertoRican seismology institute, Red Sismica.

PuertoRico is accustomed to hurricanes, butpowerfulquakesare rare.