Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
As schools in the Bahamas prepare to reopen, one teacher is hard at work for a search and rescue operation.
The Lucaya International School in Freeport will become one of the first schools to reopen in the Bahamas this week, despite the many residents who have left the islands.
Teachers at the private school, which serves preschool through 12th grade, say it’s important to try to re-establish a sense of normalcy for the children who remain.
The nearby Jack Hayward Senior High reports that it’s still standing but that classrooms will have to be heavily sanitized before kids can come back. And further east, in Grand Bahama’s east end and the Abacos, schools were destroyed just like most of the other structures.
But high school teacher Luke Hopper isn’t thinking about the lesson plans he should have in place Wednesday when he goes back to school. Instead, he’s concentrating on his other job — working as a response team leader for the Grand Bahama Disaster Relief Foundation.
“I’ve been out 18 hours a day since Tuesday [Sept. 3], leading rescue missions out to the east end. We were the first people out on the east end by land,” Hopper said. “It looks like Abaco. From what I’ve seen from video [of Great Abaco], the destruction is similar. McLean’s Town is completely flattened. There are no houses intact.”
Grand Bahama’s east end tapers off in a series of cays — August, McLeans, Big Harbour, Sweetings and several others. After Hurricane Dorian swept through, satellite images showed these cays were largely underwater. The road from Freeport to the cays to reach survivors was impassible.
With the aid of a big German off-road vehicle, one usually used to take tourists around the wild places of the island, Hopper and his team managed to slog through Lucaya National Park and reach the cays on Wednesday, the day after the storm. What he saw he has a hard time describing.
“It hasn’t even registered yet,” he said. “We’ve been coming across bodies. We brought four guys back from Abaco across the east end and McLean’s Town.”
Despite the harrowing experience, Hopper has been back numerous times since. His team cleared 12 to 13 miles of road from Pelican Point to the cays, and they’ve had time to survey the damage on the east end, which suffered far worse than the area around Freeport.
“Sweetings Cay, that area was decimated. A couple houses out of 40 homes survived,” he said. “High Rock, every building has significant if not catastrophic damage. People were coming out of the bush after having been clinging to trees the last two days.”
But there were moments of relief as well. Of the 25 people who stayed on Sweetings Cay for the storm, all of them survived, Hopper said.
Hopper was lucky. His friends own Coral Vita Reef Restoration Co. in Freeport, which grows especially resilient coral species and then transplants them to dying or damaged reefs. Hopper rode out the storm at Coral Vita’s office and coral farm. His friend Sam Teicher, a co-founder of the company, called into CNN during the storm. The building received relatively little damage, and the group inside had tools to break through roofs and into attics to rescue neighbors from the flood waters. Search and rescue began as soon as the storm died down.
Those rescue operations are now under the banner of the Grand Bahama Disaster Relief Foundation, which was formed by Grand Bahama Port Authority executive directors Henry St. George and Rupert Hayward on Sept. 3. The organization was granted charitable status and is trying to organize the great amounts of shortterm relief aid arriving on the island from a bewildering number of sources with little coordination between them.
“There s a huge amount of immediate relief aid here,” Hopper said. “The first thing we need is serious coordination and organization of relief coming here. Once those immediate relief organizations leave, it’s going to require quality rebuilding programs, which requires mediumto long-term aid. In terms of how potential rebuilding is funded, those programs are going to have to have strong transparency.”
While Floridians and others have donated water, food, diapers and other items, Grand Bahama and the Abacos will eventually need bedding, furniture and other household items.
“The structures, many of them survived but they’re not in good shape at all,” Hopper said. “I’ve driven through communities where everything that was in the houses is out on the lawn, and I mean everything.”
That rebuild is going to require a staggering amount of funding. Damage from Hurricane Dorian to the Bahamas is estimated at $7 billion.
“The longer term for this island is the rebuilding. There needs to be investment in rebuilding this island,” Hopper said. “The amazing thing, day one, I know part of this is trauma and response to shock, but people are already ready to go. They’re ready to rebuild. They just need to be empowered to do that so it can be done as effectively and quickly as possible, planned in such away that those who need help the most get it.”