Bermuda battens down as Hurricane Ernesto approaches

(Adds information details of activity on the south shore in paragraph 6, adds storm’s direction in paragraph 7)

By Nicola Muirhead and Tyler Clifford

BERMUDA, Aug 16 (Reuters) – Hurricane Ernesto churned towards Bermuda on Friday as a powerful Category 2 storm likely to produce a foot (30 cm) of rainfall over the weekend and trigger life-threatening flooding and storm surges in the British island territory.

Ernesto, centered about 180 miles (290 km) southwest of the archipelago at 2 p.m. Atlantic time (1 p.m. ET/1700 GMT), was packing sustained winds of up to 100 mph (160 kph) and had the potential to drop up to 15 inches (38 cm) of rain.

It is likely to make landfall on Saturday morning, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, making conditions ripe for storm surges and flash flooding by the afternoon.

Warren Darrell, 52, of Smith’s Parish, said he had stocked up on groceries for his family, battened down the hatches and removed furniture from the lawn in preparation for Ernesto’s arrival

“I’m ready to play games with my daughters and wait,” he said. “I’m a bit worried, a little bit worried, but I think we’ll overcome. I think we’ll be fine.”

Winds, torrential rains and rip currents began picking up just before noon at John Smith’s Bay on Bermuda’s Main Island. The government planned to close a causeway bridge linking it to St. George’s Island on Friday night. A number of tourists and locals were seen roaming around the south shore, while a person was windsurfing as waves grew in size before 2 p.m.

Ernesto was crawling at roughly 14 mph (22 kph) on a north-northeast trek, the NHC said, gradually weakening and slowing by Saturday before picking up speed and potentially regaining strength later on Sunday.

Bermuda, a collection of 181 small islands clustered more than 600 miles (965 km) off the Carolina coast, can expect hurricane conditions to persist until Sunday, NHC Director Michael Brennan said in an online briefing.

Fewer than a dozen hurricanes have made direct landfall on Bermuda, according to records dating back to the 1850s.

PUERTO RICO POWER OUTAGES

Earlier this week, Ernesto grazed Puerto Rico as a tropical storm, bringing heavy rainfall to the U.S. Caribbean territory and cutting power to about half of its 1.5 million customers.

About 250,000 homes and businesses remained without power as of Friday morning, according to LUMA Energy, the island’s main electricity distributor.

Puerto Rico’s power grid is notoriously fragile. The island has experienced prolonged power outages in recent years when weather systems much more powerful than Ernesto rolled through.

Since Hurricane Irma seven years ago, Puerto Rico’s grid has been in a rebuilding process, and residents have increased their use of renewable power, according to a study by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Despite work to shore up the grid, and $1 billion in federal funding, the island’s main power organizations have failed to balance budgets or stabilize the central power network, said Tom Sanzillo, the institute’s director of finance.

“The grid in Puerto Rico remains in a state of disrepair,” he said.

Ernesto is the fifth named Atlantic storm of what is expected to be an intense hurricane season. Slow-moving Debby hit Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 1 hurricane just last week before soaking some parts of the Carolinas with up to 2 feet of rain. (Reporting by Nicola Muirhead in Bermuda and Tyler Clifford in New York; Additional reporting by Laila Kearney and Liya Cui; Editing by Frank McGurty, David Gregorio and Sandra Maler)