Deadly Storm Bends Toward Florida

SANTO DOMINGO — Floodwaters and mudslides spawned by Tropical Storm Noel killed at least 48 people in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, officials said today, raising the death toll as the storm regained force over water and curved toward Florida and the Bahamas.Hardest-hit by the sluggish storm were the Dominican Republic and Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, where thousands fled their homes and others sought refuge on rooftops.The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the storm’s center had emerged over the Atlantic and was regaining force after slogging across Cuba, where little damage was reported.The forecasters said Noel should bend to the northeast, veering away from a collision with Florida and threatening the Bahamas instead.At 11 a.m., Noel’s top sustained winds were near 50 mph, up from 40 mph earlier in the day.It was centered about 175 miles south-southwest of Nassau in the Bahamas and was heading north-northwest near 8 mph.Noel’s outer bands pounded Hispaniola yesterday, loosening denuded hillsides and endangering makeshift homes in gullies vulnerable to flash floods.In the Dominican Republic, almost 12,000 people were driven from their homes and nearly 3,000 homes were destroyed, while collapsed bridges and swollen rivers have isolated 36 towns, a Dominican emergency services spokesman, Luis Luna Paulino, said.“The rains continue to fall and we fear for several families,” a merengue star and Dominican congressman, Sergio Vargas, said.Mr. Luna raised the Dominican death toll yesterday to at least 30 from 16, without releasing details of the deaths.In neighboring Haiti, the death toll rose from 6 to at least 18 people dead, including two women washed away by a river in the town of Gantier, the director of Haiti’s civil protection agency, Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, said today.Red Cross volunteers said a 3-year-old boy drowned as his family tried to rescue him from a raging river in Duvivier.About 2,000 people were evacuated from homes from the southern coastal city of Jacmel, where at least 150 residents were stranded on rooftops.In Port-au-Prince, thousands slogged through waist-high water that turned streets into brown rivers, carrying their last remaining possessions as they fled inundated shacks. Refugees arrived by the truckload in the dense seaside slum of Cite Soleil, where they were packed into two schools and given food by volunteers.In Cuba, the government said about 1,000 homes had suffered damage, several thousand people had been evacuated from low-lying areas, and some schools were closed.As the storm closed in on the Bahamas, authorities there closed most government offices and lines formed at grocery stores and gas stations in Nassau, the capital. Rain from the outer bands of the storm forced tourists to cover themselves in trash bags or huddle for shelter in doorways.Rough surf warnings were in effect for much of South Florida. Waves were pounding beaches in the Miami area, and residents of a waterfront condominium in South Palm Beach were urged to evacuate after pounding surf destroyed a retaining wall damaged this month in another storm.Forecasters said the rains would likely miss drought-stricken Georgia, Alabama and other southeastern states.

Deadly Storm Bends Toward Florida

Deadly Storm Bends Toward Florida

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