Hurricane Sandy map 10-25-2012

While those of us living in the middle and upper portions of the Dominican Republic have had constant rain and power outages (more than normal), there is far more damage due to Hurricane Sandy in the South and South west portions of the island.

By midday today (10/25/12) 625,000 people have been evacuated and 62 towns cut off due to overflowing rivers like the Yaque Del Sur and downed bridges. 11 provinces are on high alert with 48 communities in Azua cut off from the Yaque del Sur overflowing.

Higuero International Airport (aili) cancels flights

While the Las Americas International Airport (aila) is still operating normal, the Higuero International Airport north of Santo Domingo has had to cancel several flights due to the downpours.

Hurricane Sandy Causes Power outages

While this one has been a little tougher to prove, apparently the entire countries power system went down early this morning. While I frequently have power at this time (my time of writing this article), we lose power so often it is hard to tell for sure if it is just our time to have our power turned off or if the outage is due to the storm.

Either way, if you are running on inversor, it would be a good idea to conserve power if possible until the storm passes. The State owned Electrical Utility stated that damage has been caused nationwide and they will not be able to fix the problems until the storm has passed.

Tropical Storm Warning Discontinued for Haiti

While we (Dominican Republic and Haiti) are still getting hit pretty hard by rain and wind Hurricane Sandy has passed enough so that Haiti was able to discontinue the tropical storm warning for the country.

The Hurricane is continuing toward the Central Bahamas in a Northern direction at 16 mph with maximum sustained winds of 105mph. This storm is expected to continue on its way past the United States and there are Tropical Storm warnings and watches in effect for various parts of Florida.