Canada sends military support to Bahamas
UN estimates 70,000 need food, shelter
The federal government will provide additional emergency military support to areas in the Bahamas that were destroyed by Hurricane Dorian.
Global Affairs Canada said Saturday a Canadian Armed Forces’ CC-130J Hercules aircraft was sent Friday to provide airlift support.
The large propeller-driven cargo aircraft will facilitate the deployment of the Jamaican Defence Force into the Bahamas.
A Canadian Disaster Assistance Team was sent to Nassau in the Bahamas earlier to determine how Canada can best help those affected by Hurricane Dorian along with $500,000 from the federal government.
Meanwhile, a week after one of the strongest Caribbean hurricanes on record plowed into the archipelago nation of 400,000 people, Nassau, the capital city, faced a wave of thousands of evacuees fleeing hard-hit areas including Marsh Harbour in the Abacos, where some 90 per cent of the infrastructure was damaged or destroyed.
Great Abaco was littered with mounds of unused construction materials, waterlogged notebooks and Bibles, stained piles of tattered clothes, single shoes, overturned bathtubs and rotting mattresses. Dead cats and dogs were strewn throughout the wreckage while some stray animals were digging through the garbage for food and had taken up residence on the porches of destroyed homes. At least one wild pig weathered the storm, celebrating its survival by charging at two Reuters journalists.
“What I was struck by was the focused nature of the devastation,” Mark Green, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, told reporters in Nassau on Sunday, adding that some areas in Abaco looked “almost as though a nuclear bomb was dropped.”
Bahamian officials were still pulling bodies from the wreckage across the island and acknowledged that the official death toll of 43 was likely to rise markedly.
Some 70,000 people need food and shelter, according to the United Nations’ World Food Program’s estimate. Interviews with evacuees this week shone light on the extent of Dorian’s destruction. Survivors avoided death, but lost homes, jobs and hospitals.
The Daily Telegraph reported that at least 23 of Sidney Poitier’s family members were feared missing in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian, according to the actor’s nephew.
Jeffrey Poitier, 66, said his sister Barbara and his adult children were among relatives they were awaiting news from in Freeport, Bahamas.
“We still couldn’t find any, nor have we heard from them,” Poitier said late last week. “We are still looking for and waiting for them to appear soon. It has us all worried. We are trying to reach out to them using every means available to us but we are not hearing anything. We are deeply worried.”
More than 500 Bahamians belong to the extended family of Sidney Poitier, the 92-year-old acclaimed actor who was born in Miami to Bahamian parents and who grew up in the Bahamas.
On Saturday, hundreds of weary Bahamians, some carrying small bags of belongings and children on their hips, disembarked a cruise ship in south Florida after fleeing the devastation left by Hurricane Dorian.
The evacuees arrived at the Port of Palm Beach after an all-night voyage on the Grand Celebration, a cruise ship operated by Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line, which offered free passage to the U.S. to a limited number of Bahamians.
“I feel lost between a rock and a weary line but I guess I will make it through,” said Thomas Stubbs soon after he got off the ship.
The 42-year-old owner of an air conditioning and refrigeration business in Freeport said he will gather building supplies and return to that city in the next few days to help repair the homes of about 50 family and friends.
“I have a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff lost but I will be back,” he said.
Stubbs was one of about 1,100 evacuees who made the 133-kilometre journey from Freeport. Thousands had tried to get on board.
Lanell Andrews, 30, arrived with her one-year-old twins who rode in a double stroller.
“We had to do what we had to do. You had to leave,” said Andrews, who will drop off her children with relatives and return to help rebuild her water-damaged home with her husband who remained in Freeport.
“One step at a time,” she said. “We are just trying what we can do and hope for the best.”
Hurricane Dorian, the most powerful hurricane on record to hit the Bahamas, parked itself over part of the archipelago for almost two days earlier this week, pummelling it with Category 5 winds, with some gusts topping 320 km/h.