DR1 Daily News - Dominican Republic

Last Thursday, 4 July 2024, those in Santo Domingo lived an interesting situation. For days, with Hurricane Beryl makings its way west across the Caribbean, weather forecast and emergency services alerted everyone to prevent damages the rain bands and flooding would bring. People were also told that after Beryl, another smaller storm was following. This system was in the weather forecasts everyday.

Seems everyone was so relieved to have been spared Beryl that the smaller storm, downgraded to a tropical wave, was ignored. What happened was that on Thursday afternoon, the capital city again became Venice and the tow trucks were not enough to rescue all the cars stuck in flooding streets.

People complained that the Center for Emergency Operations had uploaded a red alert for the capital city after the worst of the rains. And then on Friday, the government at 2pm...