Tropical Storm Olga, a rare December cyclone, left at least eight people dead in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico on Wednesday as pounding rains triggered major floods and landslides.
In the Dominican Republic, rescuers found numerous people clinging to trees or perched on their rooftops as floodwaters rose, according to the governor of Santiago province, Jose Izquierdo.
The northern city of Santiago, the country's second largest, was the worst hit as waters gushing from a dam further swelled an already overflowing river.
"Officially there are seven people dead in this city and 24,500 people displaced by evacuations across the country, because of rivers bursting their banks and landslides, said Juan Manuel Mendez, who heads the Emergency Operations Center.
In addition, dozens of communities were cut off from the rest of the country, he said.
An estimated 5,000 homes were affected, many of them completely destroyed, officials said.
"We are facing a very difficult situation," said provincial senator Francisco Dominguez Brito.
In Puerto Rico, one man was killed Wednesday when his car was buried under a landslide near San Juan, police said.
In Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, officials said the storm left serious damage, though there were no immediate reports of fatalities.
Olga slammed the Caribbean country on Tuesday, almost two weeks after the Atlantic hurricane season officially ended.
The storm weakened on Wednesday as it swirled over open water, but it continued to dump rain that could cause more "life-threatening flash floods and mud slides in Hispaniola," the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.
At 1500 GMT Wednesday, maximum sustained winds were recorded at 64 kilometers (40 miles) and the center of the storm was 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of Guantanamo, Cuba.
The six-month Atlantic hurricane season officially ended on November 30, and it is rare for tropical storms to form after that.
The Dominican Republic already had been hit hard by Tropical Storm Noel, which slammed the country in late October, killing at least 85 people.
Olga is the 15th named storm to form in the Atlantic this year. In all six of the storms became hurricanes, including two that hit land with rare fury, reaching the topmost intensity five with maximum sustained winds of more than 249 kilometers (155 miles) per hour.
In August, Hurricane Dean killed at least 29 people in a rampage through the Caribbean and Mexico. The following month, Hurricane Felix killed about 150 people and wrought a trail of devastation along Nicaragua's impoverished Caribbean coast.
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