MIAMI, (Reuters) – The death toll from former Tropical Storm Nicole rose to 12 in Jamaica and four in the United States yesterday and forecasters said the storm’s remains would hit like a hurricane on the U.S. Atlantic Coast from the Carolinas to New England.
Nicole was a minimal tropical storm for just six hours on Wednesday, but the broad, ragged system poured heavy rain on Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Cuba, south Florida and the Bahamas.
The storm’s remnants were moving up the U.S. East Coast and were forecast to bring gusting winds, pounding surf and coastal flooding to the region.
“The effects will be similar to that of a hurricane from eastern North Carolina to New England,” private forecaster AccuWeather said in an advisory. “The soggy ground and high winds will cause fully leafed trees to easily topple and soggy branches to fall, taking power lines with them.”Four people died in North Carolina yesterday after their vehicle hydrop-laned on U.S. Highway 64 and went into a canal in the rain-soaked eastern portion of the state, officials told Reuters. Three of the occupants died in the accident and a fourth, a child, died later, a spokeswoman for the Washington County Sheriff’s department said.
The storm was churning up the seas around the barrier islands of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and transport officials suspended ferry service on some routes on Thursday.
Parts of North Carolina were already saturated from a storm system that passed through earlier in the week.
In mountainous Jamaica, three days of torrential rain from the system caused flash flooding that killed a dozen people. Eight more were missing and feared dead.
In the latest casualties, three construction workers died when a storm-weakened wall collapsed on them early yesterday. The men were sleeping inside the half-finished house they were building in the affluent Norbrook Heights section of Kingston, police said.
Part of the house collapsed under the weight of rain from the storm, police said. Frantic neighbors led them to the site, where the men were heard screaming. Their bodies were found soon afterward.
“This is devastating. They died in a terrible way. They had little chance of survival,” a neighbour said.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, three pedestrians were swept away by rising water and six members of one family died when their house collapsed in a flood.
