San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Weakened storm bashes Caribbean on path to Florida
PORTAUPRINCE, Haiti — Tropical Storm Elsa battered the southern coasts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Saturday, downing trees and blowing off roofs as it sped through the Caribbean, killing at least three people.
Elsa was speeding northwest at 23 mph, with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph as the tropical storm, which had been a Category 1 hurricane earlier on Saturday, weakened in its approach to Hispaniola and Cuba, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
The storm was forecast to hit Cuba next on a path that would take it to Florida, with some models showing it would spin into the Gulf or up the Atlantic Coast. A tropical storm watch was in effect for the Florida
Keys from Craig Key westward to Dry Tortugas.
Meanwhile, Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 15 Florida counties, including in MiamiDade County where a highrise condominium building collapsed last month.
One death was reported in St. Lucia, according to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency. A 15yearold boy and a 75yearold woman died Saturday in separate incidents in the Dominican Republic after walls collapsed on them, according to a statement from the Emergency Operations Center.
The deaths come a day after Elsa caused widespread damage in several eastern Caribbean islands as a Category 1 hurricane, the first of the Atlantic season. Among the hardest hit was Barbados, where more than 1,100 people reported damaged houses, including 62 homes that completely collapsed as the government promised to find and fund temporary housing to avoid clustering people in shelters amid the pandemic.
Dozens of trees and power lines lay strewn across Barbados, where several schools and government buildings were damaged and hundreds of customers were without power
Saturday, according to officials.
Downed trees also were reported in Haiti, where authorities used social media to alert people about the storm and urged them to evacuate if they lived near water or mountain flanks.
“The whole country is threatened,” the Civil Protection Agency said in a statement. “Make every effort to escape before it’s too late.”
Haiti is especially vulnerable to floods and landslides because of widespread erosion and deforestation. In the neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, authorities opened more than 2,400 shelters as forecasters warned of heavy rains.