While I respect HB's long tenure here, I must agree with Pyratt...The fact that Noel turned on "a dime" into the DR at a right angle on a SUNDAY (when the main person in charge was NOT working and only 30 of the 35,000 emergency cell phones where working) does NOT give me a whole lot of faith in the DR govt's ability to handle a true catastrophe. As for Olga, it was almost accidental that some of us were watching the US weather alerts and Puerto Rico came up with a warning (this was AFTER the official season and after when all the automated alerts were zooming into people's emails). The only reason I was checking the NOAA site was because my SIL in Oklahoma had an ice storm hitting and I happened to see the alert on for
PR. I then Txt msg'd about 100 people in the DR as a "heads up" we've got a TS coming right at us. Not that I was the first one to post it on DR one...fortunately there were others who did the same thing.
It is only a matter of time. HOWEVER, the DR has one significant advantage--our mountains are close and with sufficient warning, people CAN get out of the flood plane and tidal surge range. Still, a sweeping cut through the S half of the island would do some serious damage and could kill 100,000s-millions if one looks at where the population is distributed. A well structured evac plan would avoid at least the loss of life, but property--until they build to hurricane code, that will always been susceptible.