Sept. 16, 2004
By MANUEL ERNESTO RIVERA
Associated Press Writer
YABUCOA, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Tropical Storm Jeanne turned roads into raging rivers, snapped trees with its near hurricane force winds and blacked out Puerto Rico before heading for Dominican Republic and the Bahamas. The storm killed two people in Puerto Rico.
More than 1,000 people evacuated low-lying areas and entered shelters Wednesday as deluges of rain blocked roads, downed power lines and flooded homes throughout the U.S. Caribbean territory. Some 200,000 people also were without running water.
Police rescued one couple from a car stuck in rising floodwaters on a main highway in north-coast Rio Grande before the vehicle was swept away, authorities said. "They got out through the window," emergency official Hector Rosa said.
Others were not so fortunate.
Lashing winds tore the roof from Margarita Rivera's house, flung her from a hammock and smashed her into the wall of a neighbor's house, said Mayor Angel Garcia of Yabucoa, the southeastern town where the storm's eye hit land. Rivera, who died, was 49.
In north-coast Vega Baja, 78-year-old Arturo Roman Crespo fell from a roof where he was putting up storm shutters, and died instantly, police said. They also reported a man injured in the central town of Lares when a downed tree hit his car.
Agriculture officials said plantain, banana and coffee crops probably sustained major damage.
The storm plowed northwest across the middle of the island and exited near Vega Baja, said meteorologist Scott Strippling of the U.S. National Weather Service.
Jeanne dumped up to 16 inches of rain on Puerto Rico that could continue through Friday because the storm's tail extended far past St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, said Rafael Mojica, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
About 50,000 lost power in St. Croix, but half was back by evening, officials said. Airports in the U.S. Virgin Islands remained closed.
Jeanne, which could become a hurricane, is expected to skirt the northeast coast of the Hispaniola island, where floods in May killed more than 3,000 in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
The Dominican government evacuated hundreds of people Wednesday from the north coast and outlying island of Saona.
Then Jeanne is expected to pass the 700-island Bahamas chain, recently battered by Hurricane Frances, and could go on to Florida, Georgia and South Carolina by Sunday or Monday, the Hurricane Center said.
Wind gusts near 80 mph buffeted the mountainous interior of Puerto Rico, home to some 4 million people.
At 5 a.m., Jeanne was hugging the north coast of the Dominican Republic, moving west-northwest. The storm was moving at 9 mph with maximum sustained winds near 70 mph. A storm becomes hurricane when its winds reach 74 mph.
In Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, airports were closed and businesses shuttered. Wednesday night, people mobbed a Ben and Jerry's ice cream parlor that was giving away ice cream that otherwise would spoil in the blacked-out Puerto Rican capital.
Jeanne became the 10th named storm of a busy Atlantic season Tuesday. Three major hurricanes have been through in two weeks - Charley, Frances and the deadliest of them all, Ivan, which killed 68 people in the Caribbean.
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Associated Press reporters Frank Griffiths, Ian James and Paisley Dodds in Puerto Rico and Mat Probasco in the U.S. Virgin Islands contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
http://www.wunderground.com/tropical
© 2004 The Associated Press.
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