What Is Hurricane Maria's Death Toll?

Update: Thursday, Sept. 21 at 1:12 p.m. EDT

The Prime Minister of Dominca announced that 15 are dead on the island and 20 are missing because of Hurricane Maria. Two people died on the French island of Guadeloupe.

Update: Thursday, Sept. 21 at 10:49 a.m. EDT

The death toll from the storm has risen to 14, according to CNN Thursday.

Original Story:

Hurricane Maria has battered the Caribbean while passing through Puerto Rico Wednesday.

The storm comes on the heels of another major storm, Hurricane Irma, which devastated the region earlier this month. Both storms were at times Category 5 hurricanes, the strongest designation.

So far Hurricane Maria has caused nine deaths, seven on the island of Dominica and two on the French island of Guadeloupe.

The storm made landfall on Puerto Rico Wednesday as a Category 4 Hurricane and has since weakened to a Category 3. It knocked out power to the entire island and tore roofs of houses with winds of around 155 mph. The hurricane next heads off the coast of the Dominican Republic.

“This is total devastation," said Carlos Mercader, a spokesman for Puerto Rico's governor to CNN Wednesday. “Puerto Rico, in terms of the infrastructure, will not be the same. ... This is something of historic proportions.”

Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit wrote about his harrowing experience on Facebook.

“So far the winds have swept away the roofs of almost every person I have spoken to or otherwise made contact with,” he said. “The roof to my own official residence was among the first to go and apparently this triggered an avalanche of torn away roofs in the city and in the countryside.”

Skerrit had to be saved by police when the storm hit his house, and with the island suffering widespread damage.

Hartley Henry, an advisor to the Prime Minister, described the destruction in an email to the Miami Herald.

“Little contact has been made with the outer communities but persons who walked 10 and 15 miles towards the city of Roseau from various outer districts report total destruction of homes, some roadways and crops,” said Henry. “The country is in a daze — no electricity, no running water, as a result of uprooted pipes in most communities, and definitely no land-line or cellphone services on island, and that will be for quite awhile.”

Hurricane Irma, which formed on Aug. 30 and dissipated on Sept. 15, resulted in at 50 deaths in Florida and at least 40 in the Caribbean, according to Agence France-Presse.

Several evacuees had escaped to Puerto Rico, only to have to face danger again.

Residents on several islands were without food or water for days. As Maria begins to slow down the rebuilding process for many of these islands will be fraught.