Tropical Storm Noel batters Haiti, Dominican Republic
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| Published on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 |
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By Chris Dolmetsch and Alex Morales
NEW YORK, USA (Bloomberg): Tropical Storm Noel dumped heavy rain on Haiti and the Dominican Republic, causing floods that killed at least eight people as it moved toward Cuba and the Bahamas.
Bridges were washed out and roads blocked, while incidents of robbery and looting were reported, said Holly Inurreta, a regional technical adviser for Catholic Relief Services, a US church-affiliated humanitarian group. Some rivers were close to overflowing, and may "cause a major problem," she said.
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| Residents of the Dominican village of Lucas Diaz, 45 km from Santo Domingo, try to salvage what belongings they can as the village is flooded by the heavy rains brought by tropical storm Noel. AFP PHOTO |
In the Dominican Republic, flooding caused the deaths of at least eight people, including five who drowned, and at least three others were missing, the Associated Press reported, citing the country's emergency services agency.
"A lot of people were taken by surprise because it's kind of late in the year," Inurreta said in a telephone interview from the Dominican Republic capital of Santo Domingo. She said late-season storms often pass to the west of the region.
Noel may produce as much as 30 inches of rain over Hispaniola, and may dump as much as 15 inches of rain on parts of Cuba and the Bahamas, the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center said at 8 pm EDT on Monday.
The rain is "expected to cause life-threatening flash floods and mud slides," hurricane specialists said in a bulletin on the center's website.
Noel's center was about 205 miles south southeast of Great Exuma Island, part of the Bahamas, the center said in its latest advisory. It was moving west northwest at about 14 miles per hour on a track that would take it between the central Bahamas and northern coast of Cuba on Monday night and Tuesday, the center said.
The system's maximum sustained winds were about 50 mph, with slight strengthening possible over the next 24 hours.
Catholic Relief Services was more concerned about Haiti because deforestation and poorly built homes in flood-prone areas made it more vulnerable, Inurreta said in a statement. The country is still recovering from floods earlier this month that killed at least 35 people, she said.
"The storm is slow-moving but you have to remember that the heavy rains and resulting floods and landslides from tropical storms often cause more damage and kill more people than hurricanes," Inurreta said.
Tropical-storm warnings, meaning storms with sustained winds of as much as 73 mph were expected to hit in the next 24 hours, were in effect for the northern peninsula of Haiti, the central and southeastern Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands and parts of central and southeastern Cuba, the center said.
A tropical-storm watch, meaning winds of as much as 73 mph are expected within 36 hours, was in effect for the northwestern Bahamas and may be required later today for southeast Florida, the center said.
Noel is the 14th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which lasts from June 1 to November 30. Tropical depressions become tropical storms and are named when their sustained winds reach 39 mph. Hurricanes pack winds of 74 mph or more.
Colorado State University forecasters this month cut their 2007 Atlantic hurricane outlook for a second time, predicting two more this year, including one "major" storm packing winds of more than 111 miles an hour.
This season is the first in which two Category 5 storms, the most powerful on the Saffir-Simpson scale, have come ashore in one year. September had eight named storms, tying a record for the most in a month. | | | | Reads : 112 |
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