Jamaica bears brunt of storm

HAVANA — Tropical Storm Nicole caused flooding and mudslides across Jamaica on Wednesday, leaving two confirmed dead and at least 12 more missing, even as the drenching system moved north and dissipated over the Florida straits.

The outer bands of the storm hammered Jamaica, toppling bridges and knocking out power to thousands. Many streets were filled with gushing brown torrents of water, prompting Prime Minister Bruce Golding to urge people to stay indoors.

The storm, which had sustained winds of 40 mph earlier in the day, broke apart over the Atlantic, though the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami warned that there were still large areas of heavy rain.

Information Minister Daryl Vaz said two people were confirmed dead Wednesday and officials said the toll from flash floods and mudslides could rise. He said 12 people were missing.

Emergency shelters were opened for thousands of Jamaicans who live in ramshackle homes along gullies. Major hospitals were treating only emergency cases. Officials said about 30 percent of the power utility’s customers were without electricity. Some bridges collapsed in the rushing water.

“All in all, there has been a lot of damage done to infrastructure,” Vaz said. “It’s a serious blow to the country.”

Floodwaters battered squatter communities perched uneasily on the slopes of gullies that crisscross the sprawling capital of Kingston. One slide toppled a house and killed a 14-year-oldboy, known to his neighbors as Buju, who was found in a pool of muddy water. The rest of his family - including four sisters, the youngest just 3 years old - had not been found by Wednesday evening.

In a rural area of St. Elizabeth parish, residents told government officials that two farmers in the town of Flagaman were washed away by murky floodwaters and presumed dead. Another man reportedly was swept away while trying to cross rushing the Hope River in Kingston.

Floods flattened cultivated fields of bananas, scallions and sweet pepper as the storm’s outer edges raked the island.

At least three rural towns in St. Thomas parish were isolated because of landslides and three rivers overflowing their banks. Residential areas of the north coast city of Montego Bay were under water, but tourist resorts reported few problems other than minor flooding.

Police in Westmoreland Parish’s capital of Savannala-Mar said the community was hit by a waterspout overnight that ripped the roofs off a couple of buildings and sent four people to a local hospital with scrapes. Residents also reported a possible tornado in Manchester early Wednesday.

Most of the damage in Jamaica occurred while the tropical system was classified as a depression.

Over the past three days, 8 inches of rain fell on the western part of the island and more than 7 inches on the southeast region that includes Kingston, said Romayne Robinson, duty forecaster at the Jamaica Meteorological Service.

The storm also soaked Cuba but no deaths were reported.

In Cuba, state-controlled television showed images of rain flooding roads and highways, especially around the eastern city of Santiago, but there were no reports of major damage. Far to the west in Havana, it wasn’t even raining and there was no flooding.

Communist Cuba has a well-trained civil-defense force praised for its fast response to natural disasters, one that often uses mandatory evacuations to move people to safety in many parts of the island. Authorities often order thousands of evacuations ahead of even moderate storms - but there were no such orders reported for the depression before it became a tropical storm.

Information for this article was contributed by Tammie Chisholm of The Associated Press.