Impact of Hurricane Dorian in Bahamas ‘catastrophic’, says UN official

Geneva: United Nations officials have expressed deep concern about the impact of Hurricane Dorian which has wreaked havoc in the Bahamas in the Caribbean, with one aide calling it ‘catastrophic’.

“The initial assessments that we’re getting in are that it is rather catastrophic,” said Jens Laerke, the spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), at a UN media briefing in Geneva.

Mr Laerke said Dorian is now over the Grand Bahama.

“The population there is about 51,000 people and we are concerned for every one of them. The Prime Minister of the Bahamas has said already that five individuals have been confirmed killed as a result of this hurricane.”

At the briefing, Denis McClean, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction Mami Mizutori, read a statement from her. She spoke of the “unprecedented storm which continues to batter the Bahamas and threaten the U.S. mainland.”

Ms Mizutori said it is the fourth consecutive year the world has witnessed an extremely devastating Atlantic Hurricane Season including Category Five hurricanes like Dorian.

“The sequence cannot be divorced from the fact that these last five years have been the hottest ever recorded because of the continuing rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” she added. Within the past few years, the Bahamas had been severely affected by at least three major hurricanes, all category four storms or above.