PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Tropical Storm Emily brushed past Puerto Rico and set its sights on the Dominican Republic and Haiti, where more than 630,000 people are still without shelter after last year’s earthquake.
A “steady shield of rain” should reach the island of Hispaniola shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti around noon Wednesday and the rainfall should worsen by late afternoon, said John Dlugoenski, senior meteorologist with Accuweather.com.
“The biggest threat to lives is probably the flooding,” Dlugoenski said.
Civil defense officials and the military in the Dominican Republic have already begun moving people out of high-risk zones ahead of the storm. Haitian authorities urged people to conserve food and safeguard their belongings.
In Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince, Jislaine Jean-Julien, a 37-year-old street merchant displaced by the January 2010 earthquake, said she was praying the storm would pass her flimsy tent without knocking it over.
“For now, God is the only savior for me,” Jean-Julien said at the edge of a crowded encampment facing the quake-destroyed National Palace. “I would go some place else if I could but I have no place else to go.”
Haitian emergency authorities set aside a fleet of 22 large white buses in the event they needed to evacuate people
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