Water rushes through an open bay at the Carraizo Dam to release water left by a passing storm in Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico,on Aug. 23, 2014. A tropical depression formed over the Turks and Caicos Islands on Saturday as it headed toward the Bahamas and dumped heavy rains on parts of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, according to the U.S. Hurricane Center.SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – Slow-moving Tropical Storm Cristobal lashed parts of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands with heavy rainfall on Sunday, and one man died and two other people were earlier left missing when they were caught up by swollen rivers on the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
The man who died was drowned when he tried to drive his pickup truck across a rushing river in the Dominican Republic’s Hato Mayor, a province northeast of the capital of Santo Domingo, said Juan Manuel Mendez, the country’s emergency operations director.
The two missing people were swept away late Saturday by a river that burst its banks in the western Haiti port town of Saint Marc. “We’re still looking for the bodies,” said Luckecy Mathieu, a civil protection coordinator.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Cristobal may strengthen into a hurricane later in the week over the open Atlantic. The storm’s center was expected to curve away from the U.S. East Coast.
Many residents in the sparsely populated southeastern Bahamas and the tiny British Caribbean dependency of the Turks and Caicos Islands hunkered down as Cristobal’s rains pelted windowpanes.