On April 7, intense torrential downpours swept across the Dominican Republic, triggering widespread flash flooding that inflicted devastating damage across multiple sectors, with agriculture bearing the brunt of the destruction. One of the most stark losses unfolded at a commercial poultry farm in Guayacanes, a municipal district in the eastern province of San Pedro de Macoris, where rising floodwaters completely submerged the farm’s infrastructure. By the time emergency responses could be mobilized, more than 11,000 young chicks had perished in the inundation.
Local reports confirm that floodwaters not only covered the farm’s entire breeding zones but also caused the structural collapse of multiple livestock pens. The rapid rise of water caught farm workers off guard, leaving them no time to evacuate the young birds or move them to higher, safer ground. For the farm’s owner, this incident amounts to a crippling financial blow, and it has also created an unexpected disruption to regional poultry supply chains that serve local communities across San Pedro de Macoris.
The damage extends far beyond the single poultry operation. The heavy rainfall overwhelmed drainage systems in low-lying, high-risk communities across the country, leading to flood damage to hundreds of residential properties, critical rural road networks, and thousands of acres of productive cropland. As national emergency authorities continue their on-the-ground assessments to tally the full extent of flood-related damage nationwide, local agricultural producers have issued a urgent warning: extreme weather events like this intense flooding are growing more frequent, and they pose an escalating existential threat to small and medium agricultural operations across the nation. In response to the crisis, producers are calling on the national government to roll out targeted flood mitigation infrastructure projects and provide emergency financial support to help affected producers recover and build resilience for future extreme weather events.