Santo Domingo.- The Government of the Dominican Republic remains “very attentive” to the evolution of the tropical storm Rafael formed this Monday in the Atlantic, from a tropical depression, and which is expected to intensify until it becomes a hurricane during the course of this week.
This was stated by the director of the Dominican Institute of Meteorology (Indomet)Gloria Ceballos, at the weekly press conference of the country’s president, Luis Abinader, who, for his part, assured that the authorities are taking these types of events “very seriously” and “with great caution.”
Indomet, Ceballos said, maintains “continuous surveillance” of the tropical storm, whose cloud field is already causing “significant rains” in some areas of the national territory, which for days has been under the influence of a trough.
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The situation led the Emergency Operations Center (COE) to declare different alert levels for 27 of the country’s 32 provinces.
This same Monday, the COE reported that almost 200,000 people do not have water after 25 aqueducts were affected by the rains of recent days.
At the press conference, Abinader said that his Government has adopted a series of actions to prevent possible damage to people or property in the face of a month that is expected to be “very active” in terms of rain, Ceballos added.
According to the 21:00 GMT bulletin from the US National Hurricane Center (NHC), Tropical Storm Rafael is located about 280 kilometers south of Kingston, capital of Jamaica, a country in the Caribbean. that this very night could begin to feel tropical storm conditions, and 635 kilometers southeast of Grand Cayman.
The system carries sustained winds of 75 kilometers per hour, but it is expected to increase in power and become a hurricane on Tuesday, one day before it crosses western Cuba.
The Dominican Republic was affected in November 2022 and 2023 by torrential downpours, which caused dozens of deaths and extensive material damage.
