the country s longest serving monarch. announcer: live from cnn center, this is cnn newsroom with rosemary church. it is tuesday, september 20th, 4 a.m. here on the east coast of the united states where we are tracking hurricane fiona as the storm gains strength in the atlantic. fiona is now a category 3 hurricane barrelling closer to the turks and caicos islands after tearing through the dominican republic on monday. heavy rains and strong winds ripped through cities destroying buildings and homes. more than 1 million people are without running water in the dominican republic and officials say it s too soon to know the exact number of power outages. it s only a glimpse of the power of this storm, and that s expected to get even stronger through the weeks. let s turn to our meteorologist pedram javaheri who s keeping a close eye on the storm. all eyes on the storm. it is a major hurricane, category 3. possibly up to a category 4. the turks and caicos, home to 5,000 pe
countless homes have been destroyed and rain just won t let up. it has been catastrophic rain that just won t stop. we ve seen that last tail of the storm linger over the island and continue to dump excessive amounts of rain. the first responders, the local responders, the responders of the government of puerto rico are not able to get out and help those that need it or assess the damage. parts of puerto rico are still recovering from the damage inflicted, of course, by hurricane maria in 2017 and it appears fiona could be even more destructive. pedram javaheri is tracking the storm from the cnn weather center in atlanta. what s the weather update, pedram? reporter: major hurricane, category 3 with 100-mile-an-hour winds. it s not far away from cochran town, capital of turks and caicos. it is passing across the region right now. you ll notice very symmetrical. a wind field that expands 150 miles away from the center where tropical storm forced winds are still going to b
very slowly. that s what happened to puerto rico. this storm was moving at 8 miles per hour. that is in the bottom 10% of forward speed of any hurricane ever as we list them out and that s why they picked up so much rain. that s why there was so much flooding. 32 inches. that s just one town on the south shore where you get the word san juan and it was less than 10. that s the north side. still more rain to come but probably less than a couple of inches. the storm now taking aim at the turks and caicos battering that island nation and on up towards bermuda as we work our way into the rest of the week. it s going to get stronger. this is going to be 140 mile per hour storm. right now the storm surge in the turks and caicos. up towards nova scotia. it won t be that strong. 5 to 8 feet in the low lying islands. they re only 10 feet tall. we ll be watching that. chad, thank you. hurricane fiona gathering speed as you heard chad there. it s climbing over the warm atlantic wa
raining. the outer band still lashing puerto rico. t a least four deaths reported so far. emergency crews have rescued more than 1,000 people. the efforts are still ongoing as responders try to get to people in hard to reach areas. parts of puerto rico are still recovering from hurricane maria that made landfall there five years ago today. cnn s leyla santiago is live for us in san juan. what are you hearing? brianna and john, as i checked in with families this morning, if you were in san juan, the metropolitan area, there is a small portion of areas that have had power restored. they are getting water back this morning. but if you are in the interior, if you were on the southern coast, really hit hard by hurricane fiona, there is still no power, no water. there are still people at shelters, and there are still crews trying to get access to some areas because of that flooding. i know you went over a lot of the numbers in terms of how much water has come down, the deaths
fiona dealt a devastating blow to puerto rico. most of puerto rico without power this morning. it could be days before it is restored. many people there also have no running water. at least two deaths have been reported from the hurricane which dumped up to 30 inches of rain. emergency crews have rescued well over a thousand people including this woman who had to be carried to safety. many more may still be trapped in the flood waters. parts of the island, puerto rico we re talking about, are still struggling to recover from maria that made landfall five years ago today. let s go to layla santiago. what can you tell us? brianna, john, it has been continuing to rain this morning. these are the outer bands of fiona. we are in the northeastern part of the island, san juan. where a small portion of customers have actually had their power restored, but in the interior, in the southern part where we spent most of our time it s a different story. they are waking up without pow