Tropical Storm Laura tore through the Dominican Republic with strong winds, dumping heavy rainfall that left residents wading waist-deep through floods, video shows.

The storm on Saturday killed at least four people, forced more than a thousand to evacuate and caused several homes along the Isabela River to collapse, officials said.

There were also damaged roads, downed trees and knocked-out power lines that caused outages for more than a million residents, mostly in the northern and eastern regions of the island.

One of the most devastated areas was Azua Compostela, where residents could be seen wading through floodwaters in an attempt to salvage their belongings from their homes, video shows.

In the capital, Santo Domingo, 7-year-old Darwin Frias and his mother, Clarissa, 44, were killed when their house collapsed.

Laura is expected to strengthen into a hurricane and make landfall late Wednesday or early Thursday somewhere between New Orleans, La., and Corpus Christi, Texas, according to the National Hurricane Center.

With Post wires