Update for 2 p.m.

More than 5,000 people in the Dominican Republic were forced to flee their homes Thursday due to heavy rains from Tropical Storm Emily, the according to the Dominican Emergency Operations Center’s latest bulletin.

The storm was moving slowly and hovering over Beata Island, a tiny island in the Caribbean sea just off the coast of southwest Dominican Republic. The entire country was under a heavy cloud cover with occasional downpours, the bulletin said.

The following provinces are under red alert: San Juan, Barahona, San Cristóbal, Azua, Pedernales, Peravia, San Pedro de Macorís, Santo Domingo, Distrito Nacional, San José de Ocoa, Independencia, Bahoruco, Hermanas Mirabal, La Altagracia, La Romana, Monte Plata, Sánchez Ramírez, Monseñor Nouel, La Vega, Santiago, Dajabón, El Seibo, Duarte, María Trinidad Sánchez, Espaillat and Elías Piña.

About 1,200 people sought refuge in shelters nationwide, most of them in San Juan de la Maguana.

Several rivers swelled from their banks, cutting off nine communities. Three communities in Azua are cut off after the collapse of the Cantarilla Guayabal Padre de las Casas bridge.

Five more communities in San Pedro de Macoris are incommunicado because the Soco River has also spilled over. At least seven towns in that province are flooded, the bulletin reported.

Eleven more towns near the Sabana Yegua dam on the western part of the country were evacuated as a precautionary measure.

No deaths or injuries have been reported.

Update for 1:30 p.m.

Tropical Storm Emily’s torrential rains have begun to force evacuations on Hispaniola.

Some 1,600 people were evacuated in the Dominican Republic, where up to 12 inches of rain was expected to fall over two to three days. It was less rain than expected but weather conditions were poor enough to cancel more than a dozen flights.

In Puerto Rico, only 16 families sought refuge from rising waters, the government said.

Roads in the eastern cities of Fajardo, Naguabo, Patillas and Ceiba were flooded as rivers swelled from their banks. Authorities worked before dawn to pump waist-high water from a major roadway in Dorado, WAPA TV reported.

Gov. Luis Fortuno said a number of landslides disrupted local roads.

A flood watch for central Puerto Rican cities such as Cauas was extended until 8 p.m. Thursday.

Update for 11 a.m.

After stalling for most of the night, Tropical Storm Emily crept toward the Haitian coast Thursday morning, perhaps beginning an anticipated curve to the north that forecasters expect will keep its core off South Florida and the Atlantic Coast.

In Haiti, flooding was reporting in the Artibonite area, around the city of Grande Saline. The government also shut down all ports and canceled domestic flights. Several flights from Miami International Airport to Hispaniola and Puerto Rico were canceled.

The National Hurricane Center said Emily appeared to be growing better organized but its top winds remained at 50 mph. The storm was expected to weaken as it crossed mountainous areas of Haiti and Eastern Cuba but forecasters also stressed that it was difficult to say how much Emily might strengthen as it approached the Bahamas. Still, the official forecast called for it to remain until Monday, when it could reach hurricane status as it heads off into open waters.

Haiti braced for another potential natural disaster Thursday as slow-moving Tropical Storm Emily loomed just off the coast of a nation where more than 600,000 people still live in makeshift encampments 18 months after a devastating earthquake.

Emily remained disorganized and stalled just south of Hispaniola in the overnight hours but torrential rains were sweeping the Dominican Republic and southern coast of Haiti, where flash floods and mudslides have killed hundreds in previous storms. A day earlier, the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic both issued “red alerts’’ and urged residents to seek safe shelter.

“For now, God is the only savior for me,” Jislaine Jean-Julien, a street vendor who lost her home to the quake, told The Associated Press as she prayed in her tent in the capital of Port-au-Prince. “I would go some place else if I could, but I have no place else to go.’’

For South Florida, the Bahamas and elsewhere, forecasters said impacts still remained uncertain, largely dependent on how the disorganized storm survived a rough crossing of the mountains of Hispaniola and Eastern Cuba and whether it would finally make an anticipated turn toward the northwest. Because of the uncertainty, the National Hurricane Center posted no tropical storm watches for South Florida but cautioned that residents should closely monitor Emily’s progress.

“Right now, it’s looking like a big sloppy tropical storm,’’ said Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in West Miami-Dade County, said Wednesday.

Whether that means damaging winds, power outages and flooded neighborhoods or just a blustery weekend won’t be clear until perhaps Friday.

“The whole key is what’s left of the system when it reemerges somewhere off the coast of Haiti or Cuba,’’ said Robert Molleda, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami.

At 8 a.m., Emily’s top winds remained around 50 mph and forecasters had nudged the track cone just off the South Florida coast. The meandering storm was expected to begin moving west-northwest around 7 mph sometime Thursday morning on a track crossing the southern peninsula of Haiti and eastern Cuba by Friday. From there, it would speed up as it passed through the Bahamas, sideswiping Florida Saturday and skirting the Atlantic coast before curving out into the ocean.

But with the storm struggling against strong wind shear and absorbing dry air, uncertainty remained in the forecast. If the storm continues to move westward, it could bring it closer to South Florida before it turns. If Emily weakened, some computer models also suggested it continue drifting westward toward the Gulf of Mexico, pushed by surface winds rather than the upper level steering currents that guide well-organized tropical systems.

“Weaker systems such as this are always a lot more difficult to forecast than the strong hurricanes that are out here,’’ Feltgen said.

Forecasters expected Emily to remain a tropical storm as it moved up the Atlantic coast, becoming a hurricane only once it was far from the mainland. On its forecast track, Emily’s worst winds and rains would remain 100 miles or so off South Florida but emergency managers in Miami-Dade and Broward were monitoring its path closely.

In Haiti, where hillsides stripped of trees and foliage increase the risk of deadly mudslides, the hurricane center was predicting from six to 12 inches of rain, with up to 20 inches in some mountain areas. Civil authorities had not yet called for evacuations and the hope was that the worst weather would bypass a capital city where masses remain homeless and shelters are in short supply.

When he visited the center of emergency operation Tuesday evening, Haitian President Michel Martelly acknowledged the problems and urged citizens to find shelter with friends or family.

“We know the fragility of our country,’’ he said. “Those shelters won’t be enough regarding the amount of people who could be affected by the storm.’’

In addition to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, tropical storm warnings were posted for Guantanamo and Holguin in Eastern Cuba, the Southeast and Central Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands. A tropical storm watch was posted for the Northern Bahamas.

In Cuba, the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo reminded its 8,000 or so residents to check their hurricane supply kits but did not expect much of a hit from Emily.

“Based on the current weather forecast, the base is anticipating rain and higher-than-normal wind,’’ said Navy Chief Bill Mesta. “The amounts of rain and level of wind are not expected to cause any damage.”

Miami Herald Staff Writer Carol Rosenberg and Amelie Baron in Haiti contributed to this report.