Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica are under hurricane alert as Tropical Storm Tomas roars across the Caribbean.
Tomas was downgraded to a tropical storm from a Category 1 hurricane but the US National Hurricane Centre warned that it may regain strength early this week as it passes south of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, where more than one million survivors of the January earthquake are living in tented camps.
Under some models of the storm’s track, Tomas was forecast to turn to the north and head towards Haiti, but it could also move further south.
Other projections show the storm possibly shifting course farther east towards the Dominican Republic or even west towards Jamaica.
The storm swept over St. Lucia and St. Vincent on Saturday, damaging homes, knocking out power and blocking roads with flooding and debris. There were no immediate reports of any deaths.
Tomas was gusting with winds of almost 65 miles per hour and was located about 250 miles from Curacao, the Miami-based centre said.
Any heavy rains and powerful winds from Tomas would pose a significant threat to the estimated 1.3 million homeless survivors now living in temporary camps in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.
This year’s Atlantic hurricane season has produced 12 hurricanes, five of them major, but the US has escaped a significant hurricane landfall so far.