DUBAI (Agencies)
At least 43 people were killed in floods and landslides triggered by Tropical Storm Noel as it barreled across Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, in the Caribbean, officials said Tuesday.
After drenching Hispaniola, an island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, Noel late Tuesday moved slowly across the Cuban interior.
It left at least 30 people dead and 15 reported missing in the Dominican Republic, and threatened to cause more floods and mudslides across the region, already drenched by weeks of rainfall.
The National Emergency Committee said nearly 20,000 people had to evacuate their homes across the country.
In Haiti, an AFP reporter in the capital city Port-au-Prince witnessed four deaths, including a 14-year old girl and her mother who were killed when an uprooted tree crushed their house.
Authorities in the impoverished and vulnerable Caribbean nation reported another nine deaths, 11 injuries and 3,000 people evacuated from their homes across the country.
Heavy rain swept away and destroyed homes in three departments, said Marie Alta Jean Baptiste, head of the country's civil protection agency.
The storm caused authorities in the Dominican Republic and Haiti to shut down airports.
Haitian Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis said 1.5 million dollars had been set aside to assist storm victims.
Dominican President Leonel Fernandez convened an emergency cabinet meeting and announced a three million dollar relief package for storm victims.
In Cuba, 2,000 people in the storm's path were evacuated.
Tropical Storm Noel was expected to head back out to sea off the north coast of Cuba Tuesday night or Wednesday.
It was then expected to barrel over some of the Bahamian islands before heading north into the Atlantic Ocean, though forecasters said Noel's likely track would take it dangerously close to Florida's east coast.
At 2400 GMT, the center of the storm was 40 kilometers (25 miles) south-southwest of Camaguey, Cuba. Noel packed maximum sustained winds of 65 kilometers (40 miles) per hour. |
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Oman braces Meanwhile, Oman braced itself as tropical storm 05A approached its coast, but authorities said there was no chance of a cyclone, similar to Gonu that wreaked havoc earlier this year.
“It is only a deep depression over the Arabian Sea and even rain forecast is of moderate intensity and not heavy,” Lt. Colonel Azhar al-Kindy, a member of the National Committee for Civil Defence (NCCD), told UAE daily Gulf News on Wednesday.
Kindy told the paper the depression was located about 750 km off the Dhofar coast in southern Oman and was traveling at 18 km per hour in the west-northwesterly direction.
“We advise people to stay away from sea and not risk crossing wadis where flooding could prove dangerous,” Kindy cautioned, adding that authorities have warned fishermen to stay away from the sea around Salalah.
The Tropical Storm Tracker Web site presdicts the storm will be downgraded to a Tropical Depression by afternoon tomorrow.
Cyclone Gonu – the strongest tropical cyclone in the Arabian Sea – killed 49 people in Oman and 23 others in Iran in June. |
