WEB DESK
Hurricane Maria, the second maximum strength storm to hit the Caribbean this month, killed at least one person in the French island territory of Guadeloupe and reached the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, Maria, a rare Category 5 storm, churned in the Virgin Islands with maximum sustained winds of 280 kilometer per hour.
It will cross Puerto Rico today and pass the northeast coast of the Dominican Republic tomorrow, said the NHC.
The Governor of Puerto Rico, asked the island’s 3.5 million people to seek shelter. The storm is moving roughly along the same track as Irma, this season’s other category five hurricane. Irma devastated several small islands, including Barbuda and the US Virgin Islands of St. Thomas and St. John, and caused heavy damage in Cuba and Florida, killing at least 84 people in the Caribbean and the U.S. mainland.