Noel douses Cuba; toll in region hits 22

Florida on watch as storm moves closer

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - Tropical Storm Noel delivered heavy rain to the western Caribbean on Tuesday as it pushed through Cuba and edged closer to Florida. Floods and mudslides across the region have killed at least 22 people.

Forecasters projected the storm would emerge over water today near central Cuba and head northeast toward the Bahamas.

Residents of southeastern Florida were advised to monitor the progress of Noel, which could pass close to the state over the next few days.

Warnings were in effect for rough surf for much of South Florida, including the Miami area, as waves were already pounding the region's beaches.Swimmers are advised to stay out of the ocean because of the risk of rip currents and waves higher than 10 feet. But forecasters said the rains would likely miss drought-stricken Georgia, Alabama and other Southeastern states.

The storm cut a destructive path across the island of Hispaniola, which is shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Because of difficulties reaching remote areas of Hispaniola, there was uncertainty over death toll figures, with emergency officials reporting between 22 and 36 people dead.

Tuesday evening, a Dominican emergency commission spokesman revised the death toll in the country upward to at least 30. The official, Luis Luna Paulino, did not release specifics of the deaths, and earlier in the dayhe acknowledged miscalculating a previous toll.

Almost 12,000 people were driven from their homes and nearly 3,000 homes were destroyed, while collapsed bridges and swollen rivers have isolated 36 towns, Luna said.

In neighboring Haiti, at least six people died, including two women washed away by a river in the town of Gantier, said U.N. peacekeeping mission spokesman Mamadou Bah. Red Cross volunteers said a 3-year-old boy drowned as his family tried to rescue him from a raging river in the neighborhood of Duvivier.

Noel's outer bands were pounding the two countries Tuesday evening even as the center of the sluggish storm chugged away from Hispaniola, where damages from flash flooding are exacerbated by erosion and stripped hillsides.

In the Haitian capital, Portau-Prince, thousands slogged through waist-high water that turned streets into brown rivers.

At 10 p.m. CDT, Noel's center was near latitude 21.4 north and longitude 78.1 west, or "very near" Camaguey, Cuba, and about 255 miles south of Nassau, Bahamas. Some strengthening could occur as it moves away from Cuba.

In Cuba, the government said about 1,000 homes had been damaged, 2,000 people had been evacuated from low-lying areas, and schools were closed for several thousand students.

Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan M. Katz, Will Weissert, Jessica Robertson and David McFadden of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 10/31/2007

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