This general / weather report will be posted tonight and tonight only... For all of you who were wondering - in Santo Domingo and other places.
It is raining - it is not raining hard, there is not much wind, but it is raining as if it is never going to end raining. Thick cloud cover and persistent rain, just a little more than a drizzle. This I think is the 'blob' that was behind Jeanne. And I think it will carry through tomorrow at least. General other conditions, power is down in most places, telephone lines are down in many places and Orange seems to be the most "up", although overloaded.
Other North Coast News
Cabarete - Reports are only now starting to 'drizzle' in from Cabarete. It is hard to do storm cleanup, report on conditions, and deal with the persistent rain. Cabarete has very little power, stores are still mostly closed and people are still mostly in a clean-up mode. Only Orange seems to be working - some landlines available in some areas. I am not sure which restaurants on the beach are open tonight... People are tired and probably and hopefully trying to relax a little tonight.
Sosua, Dawnwill has a party tonight and she has nothing clean to wear - I'm sure she'll cope!
There is no power, Orange seems to be working and seems to be the most consistent although overloaded. Ed at Rockies today looked like a slow motion sloth
(this is not a negative comment - it did not affect the quality of his work but he worked long long hours and slept little)... and like all of us, he was quite slow. Cleanup was starting to happen. People are tired.
Puerto Plata Airport - Came by there at around 1pm today - it was quiet. Not sure if planes can land in these rainy and thick cloud cover conditions, but I would question if they could take off. It is really wet out here.
On the way to Puerto Plata airport, between Puerto Plata and Sosua, the "hurricane" fence on the main road fencing in the golf course at Playa Dorado was quite damaged with trees hanging over it. Billboards were hanging in tatters, upside down, torn down and in some instances crumpled like pieces of aluminium foil paper.
Puerto Plata - Just before I entered Puerto Plata from the tunnel road (from Santiago), there were some shacks that were demolished and battered. I saw a lot of damage to older cana roofs and some aluminium roofs. People were cleaning up - I saw a number of civil defense crews out helping and directing clean up operations. Puerto Plata looked quite damaged today as we drove through. Most billboards were hanging in tatters - Many many store signs were hanging skew... there were front end loaders on the Malecon cleaning up debri and huge seagrape and other trees blocking the roads. Store windows were shattered. The seas were surprisingly calm and only running at about 3 -4 feet. On the Malecon I could not see any visible damage to the buildings. On the street behind, I saw roofs torn off and visible damage. On entering Puerto Plata, there was visible damage to the roofs of the buildings in the Zona Franca. One roof literally was crumpled and rolled up and scrunched up and discarded...
Trees are lying across most roads. Mostly on the main roads they've been chopped so that people can go by. On our road (the road passing Haciendas el Choco), it looked like a maze. We literally wiggled our way through.
Its raining, people are tired, and cleanup, repairs and fix-ups have hardly begun.
On the road today between Mao Valverde and Sosua, there was very little traffic. The road was not much damaged, excepting the piece between the Puerto Plata airport and Sosua. It is hard to imagine, but this stretch of road is now worse than ever!
If I had energy (and could find my way back through the maze of trees littering our road connection to the main road) I would go and part with Dawnwill!
North Coast Extraordinary General / Weather Report
