After battering the Bahamas, tropical storm Noel strengthened to hurricane force as it moved toward Bermuda, forecasters said Thursday.
The storm's torrential rains killed more than 107 people in the Caribbean, and was located about 810 miles west-southwest of Bermuda by 8 p.m. ET. Its maximum sustained winds had reached near 75 miles per hour, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The storm is now a Category 1 hurricane — the lowest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
Noel on Thursday became the deadliest storm of the Atlantic region this year. Hurricane Felix, a devastating Category 5 storm, killed 101 people when it lashed the Caribbean and slammed into the Nicaraguan and Honduran coasts in early September.
Muddy rain-swollen waters overflowed a dam in Cuba, washing into hundreds of homes, over highways and knocking out electricity and telephone service. Dozens of small communities were cut off.
In Ciego de Avila province in central Cuba, flooding wiped out nearly 2,000 tons of corn, potato, banana, cucumber and tomato harvests, said Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, a vice president.
The storm brought a record 15 inches of rain to the Bahamas, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham said. Flooding forced the evacuation of almost 400 people as Noel swirled toward the capital, Nassau. The majority of those forced to move were residents of the northeast Bahamian island of Abaco, Ingraham said.
Rescuers in Dominican Republic took off in helicopters and boats to reach isolated residents for the first time in three days. Hundreds of volunteers joined Dominican civil defense forces to help stranded residents, as rescue teams left at dawn Thursday — many in boats loaned by private owners.
More than three days of heavy rain caused an estimated 30 million U.S. dollars in damage to the Dominican Republic's rice, plantain and cacao plantations, said Minister of Economy Juan Temistocles Montas. Government officials will request loans from the Inter-American Development Bank to help with the recovery.
Source: Xinhua/Agencies
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