PARADISE LOST
In harrowing aerial photographs and survivors’ stories, how hurricane turned the idyllic Bahamas into...
A FISHERMAN has told how he watched his wife drown in their Bahamas home after the kitchen cabinets she was standing on disintegrated.
More than 20ft of water barrelled through the couple’s house when Hurricane Dorian struck, trapping them as they battled to keep their heads above water, surrounded by floating kitchen appliances.
Howard Armstrong’s heartbreaking account came as the devastation of Dorian was laid bare yesterday, with pictures showing boats strewn across land and homes reduced to rubble by the category 5 storm, which brought winds of up to 220mph.
The death toll stands at seven, with at least 25 injured, but more bodies are expected to be recovered when the floods recede.
Mr Armstrong choked back tears as he described the moment his wife, Lynn, slipped underwater, after she told him: ‘I think I’m going to die.’ He said: ‘My poor little wife got hypothermia – she was standing on top of the kitchen cabinets until they disintegrated. I kept with her and she just drowned.’
Mr Armstrong has lived on the islands for 58 years, and ‘battled many a hurricane’ but this was the first time his house in Freeport, on the island of Grand Bahama, had been flooded.
The fisherman managed to flee on his boat after watching his wife die and deciding he couldn’t stay in the house. Mr Armstrong said: ‘We were doing all right until the water kept coming up and all the appliances were going around the house, like the washing machine.
‘She was on the kitchen cabinets, it was the only place where your head would touch the roof, the water was coming up quick. It was up to our necks, I was holding her up. The dog and the cat were swimming around in there, it was a complete mess of furniture, washing machines, refrigerators, going across from one side to the other. It was like you were in the ocean.
CNN, ‘She was adding: gone ‘I so never quickly,’ recovered he told her, she’s gone, I could not find her body. I got out of the house after my wife drowned because you could not be in there any more. I saw my boat was still there and I took a chance and swam. Everything I own is gone, every single thing.’
Mr Armstrong said his neighbour had also been killed.
Lia Head-Rigby, who helps run a hurricane relief organisation, said after flying over the islands: ‘It’s total devastation. Apocalyptic. It’s not rebuilding something that was there; we have to start again.’
Londa Sawyer, who was rescued along with her children and two dogs, described the northern Abaco islands as looking like ‘a bomb had hit’. She and her family had been floating on a mattress inches from their ceiling, she said.
As the authorities struggled to reach those still stranded, locals joined the rescue efforts on jet skis, and a British support ship with military personnel on board has started delivering aid.
RFA Mounts Bay was last night off the Abaco islands. Royal Engineers personnel a Wildcat and have Royal helicopter gone Fleet ashore, based Auxiliary while on board has been carrying out reconnaissance missions. Captain Rob Anders, commanding officer on RFA Mounts Bay, told Forces News that the scene on the islands was ‘quite catastrophic’.
Hurricane Dorian, now a category 2 storm, inched up from Florida yesterday, and is due to hit North and South Carolina today.