Barbados braces as tropical storm Dorian approaches Caribbean

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO — Much of the eastern Caribbean island of Barbados shut down on Monday as tropical storm Dorian approached the region and gathered strength, threatening to turn into a small hurricane that forecasters said could affect the northern Windward islands and Puerto Rico in coming days.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley closed schools and government offices across Barbados as she warned people to remain indoors.

“When you’re dead, you’re dead,” she said in a televised address late Sunday. “Stay inside and get some rest.”

The U.S. National Hurricane Center issued a hurricane watch for St. Lucia and a tropical storm warning for Barbados, Martinique, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It also issued a tropical storm watch for Dominica, Grenada, Saba and St. Eustatius. The storm was expected to dump between eight and 20 centimetres of rain on Barbados and nearby islands, with isolated amounts of 25 cm.

As of 2 p.m. ET Monday, the fourth tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season was centred about 155 kilometres east-southeast of Barbados and moving west at 22 km/h. Maximum sustained winds were at 95 km/h.

Forecasters said it could brush past southwest Puerto Rico late Wednesday as a Category 1 hurricane and then strike the southeast corner of the Dominican Republic early Thursday.

In St. Lucia, Prime Minister Allen Chastanet announced that everything on the island of nearly 179,000 people would shut down by 6 p.m. ET on Monday, with the hurricane expected to hit at about 2 a.m. ET on Tuesday.

“We are expecting the worst,” he said.

Some people were still boarding up windows and buying food and water, but not Joannes Lamontagne, who lives in the island’s southwest region. He said by phone that everything at his hotel, Serenity Escape, was already protected.

“I don’t wait until it’s announced,” he said of the storm. “We’re always prepared no matter what.”

Meanwhile, in Barbados, many of the 285,000 inhabitants heeded the government’s warning, including Fitz Bostic, owner of Rest Haven Beach Cottages. He said he’s prepared in case officials shut down power and utility services, as they have in previous storms.

“We have to be very cautious,” he said in a telephone interview. “The word ‘storm’ frightens me, man. I’m very nervous.”

In the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, hundreds of people have been crowding into grocery stores and gas stations to prepare for Dorian, buying food, water and generators, among other things.

Many are worried about power outages and heavy rains on an island still struggling to recover from hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm that hit nearly two years ago.

Some 30,000 homes still have blue tarps as roofs, and the electrical grid remains fragile and prone to outages, even during brief rain showers.

Forecasters said the storm could pass near or south of Puerto Rico on Wednesday and approach the Dominican Republic on Wednesday night.