SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Hurricane Irene cut power to more than a million people in Puerto Rico, downing trees and flooding streets on Monday, and forecasters warned it could be a major storm as it threatens Florida and South Carolina by the end of the week.
There were no reports of deaths of major injuries in Puerto Rico, but Gov. Luis Fortuno declared a state of emergency and urged people to stay indoors to avoid downed power lines, flooded streets and other hazards.
“This isn’t the time to go out to find out what happened … This is the time stay in your homes,” Fortuno said at a news conference.
The first hurricane of the Atlantic storm season posed an immediate threat to the northeastern coast of the Dominican Republic, though the center of the hurricane was expected to miss neighboring Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola. Nearly 600,000 Haitians are still homeless due to the January 2010 earthquake and that country could still see heavy rain and tropical-storm-force winds, said Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.
“We don’t expect to this to get ripped up over the mountains of Hispaniola,” Feltgen said. “We expect it
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