SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- Tropical Storm Erika began to lose steam Friday over Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but it caused a trail of destruction that killed at least 20 people and left another 31 missing on the small eastern Caribbean island of Dominica, authorities said.
Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said in a televised address late Friday that the island has been set back 20 years in the damage inflicted by the storm.
"The extent of the devastation is monumental. It is far worse than expected," he said, adding that hundreds of homes, bridges and roads have been destroyed.
Erika's 15 inches of rain set off floods and mudslides in Dominica, where at least 31 people have been reported missing, according to officials with the Barbados-based Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said the system was to move north across the island of Hispaniola, where the mountains would weaken it to a tropical depression today and possibly cause it to dissipate entirely.
The center of Erika was located at latitude 18.3 N and 72.0 W, about 25 miles southeast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and was moving west at about 21 mph late Friday, the hurricane center said.
It could regain some strength off northern Cuba and people in Florida should still keep an eye on it and brace for heavy rain, said John Cagialosi, a hurricane specialist at the center. "This is a potentially heavy rain event for a large part of the state," he said.
A Section on 08/29/2015