Tropical Storm Noel drenched the Bahamas yesterday while in the storm's wake rescuers in the Dominican Republic headed out in boats and helicopters to reach dozens of communities stranded by floods and mudslides. The death toll in the Caribbean rose to 101. Noel equalled the deadliest storm of the Atlantic region this year and stands to surpass it. Hurricane Felix, a devastating Category 5 storm, killed 101 people when it lashed the Caribbean and slammed into the Nicaraguan and Honduran coasts in early September. In the Bahamas, flooding from rainfall overnight forced some people to evacuate their homes on Long Island, in the southeastern part of the Atlantic archipelago, according to Carl Smith, director of the National Emergency Management Agency. There were no reports of injury or death in the Bahamas. By yesterday morning, Noel had already dumped nearly five inches of rain on the capital, Nassau. Rescuers in the Dominican Republic took off in helicopters and boats to reach isolated residents for the first time in three days. Hundreds of volunteers joined Dominican civil defence forces to help stranded residents, as rescue teams left at dawn yesterday - many in boats loaned by private owners. More than three days of heavy rain caused an estimated US$30 million in damage to the Dominican Republic's rice, plantain and cacao plantations, said Minister of Economy Juan Temistocles Montas. Government officials will request two loans worth US$100 million each from the Inter-American Development Bank to help ravaged areas recover. Rescuers in Hispaniola - the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti - found a rising toll of death and damage - at least 66 dead in the Dominican Republic and 34 in Haiti, where the majority of bodies were found in and around the capital of Port-au-Prince. One person was killed in Jamaica. In Haiti, civil protection crews confirmed 10 more deaths overnight, raising the national toll to 34, said Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, director of Haiti's civil protection agency. The total could climb even higher as authorities reach remote towns in the Haitian countryside. Noel is the deadliest storm in this part of the Caribbean since Tropical Storm Jeanne hit Haiti in 2004, triggering floods and mudslides that killed an estimated 3,000 people. Reprinted from jamaicaobserver.com