Bahamas will need billions after Dorian devastation
For the people of the Bahamas, the question yesterday was not how to rebuild their lives but how to start again from the very beginning.
After almost two days spent in the eye of the most intense hurricane that the country has ever seen, the true scale of the impact only began to emerge as the first helicopters landed on the worst hit islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama.
The official death toll stood at seven last night, but the true losses were expected to be much higher. Children are believed to be among the dead.
The scenes were described as “apocalyptical”. Images emerged of bodies being loaded on to the back of trucks and local media started to compile “walls” of missing people.
A single Facebook post by Our News Bahamas seeking the names of missing people had more than 1,600 comments listing lost family members in just 24 hours. The islands have a population of 395,000.
On social media, people were begging for information on entire families who could not be contacted. The story of Howard Armstrong, a
crab fisherman, was one of the few to have emerged from Freeport, on Grand Bahama, and he told how his wife had lost her life.
He told CNN that floodwaters had reached the roof of his house and his wife “got hypothermia and she was standing on top of the kitchen cabinets until they disintegrated … I kept with her and she just drowned on me”.
Pictures emerged showing entire neighbourhoods reduced to fields of rubble. Boats were tossed inland like toys as muddy flood waters covered the islands which were battered by winds up to 185mph.
As rescuers began to reach the islands there were unconfirmed reports of armed men looting in Marsh Harbour, the capital of Abaco, where there was said to be no food, fuel or clean water.
“We are in the midst of one of the greatest national crises in our country’s history,” said Hubert Minnis, the Bahamian prime minister.
The Mud, a shanty town, has been completely wiped out and as many as 13,000 homes, almost half of those on the islands, may have been destroyed or severely damaged, experts believe.
The world watched in horror on Tuesday and yesterday as the images of the devastation emerged after the storm made landfall on Sunday. Pope Francis urged everyone to pray for the
‘One of the greatest national crises in our country’s history’
‘The clock is now ticking to get help to those in need’ ‘We don’t have any homes left, everything is completely destroyed, just wiped away’
victims who, in one day, “lost their homes, lost everything, lost their lives”.
British ship RFA Mounts Bay, which had been stationed in the Caribbean since June in readiness for hurricane season, began distributing aid yesterday including shelter kits.
It is understood to have been the only ship in the region with the capability to get such supplies in so quickly.
Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, said that the ship’s Wildcat helicopter had begun conducting reconnaissance flights of the Bahamas to help assess the damage, and the crew had begun distributing UK aid.
“My thoughts remain with those affected and our world-class military will continue to assist the Bahamian government to offer relief and aid to those who need it most,” he said.
Teams for the ships are expected to carry out aid missions on the ground in the coming days.
Alok Sharma, the International Development Secretary, added: “The images of devastation and destruction across the Bahamas are truly shocking. The clock is now ticking to get help to those in need, and I’m pleased that Mounts Bay has begun to deliver life-saving relief items to those in desperate need.”
As the winds and rain subsided, more than 600 police officers and marines fanned out across Grand Bahama and an additional 100 in Abaco. “The devastation is unlike anything that we’ve ever seen before,” said Margin Dames, the Bahamas’ national security minister.
“We’re beginning to get on the ground, get our people in the right places. We have a lot of work in the days and weeks and months ahead.”
Rescuers used jet skis, boats and even a bulldozer to reach children and adults trapped by the swirling waters.
But because of the slow moving nature of the hurricane they have, for days, been struggling to reach people stranded in the decimated landscape, some of whom were understood to be still stuck on their roofs yesterday morning. Tens of thousands of people still need food and water.
“It’s total devastation. It’s decimated. Apocalyptic,” said Lia Headrigby, who helps run a hurricane relief group and flew over Abaco. “It’s not rebuilding something that was there; we have to start again.”
The coming days are crucial in getting life-saving aid to those in the worst hit islands, according to Dr Jonathan Stone, who is leading a team of humanitarian experts for the Department for International Development.
His team has been in Nassau since Monday coordinating with the Bahamian government and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CEDEMA). They will focus now on getting aid where it is needed the most. Speaking to The
Daily Telegraph after a reconnaissance flight over Grand Bahama, Dr Stone said: “The hurricane sat over the island for more than a day, which is fairly unprecedented. That fact and the damage it caused has prevented us access until now.
“The situation on the ground was horrible. There were flattened buildings, boats littered through the trees, trees blown down and cars crumpled.”
He said that the British teams were making a “significant difference” to the rescue efforts.
Yesterday, just before lunch local time, the first rescue helicopters from Abaco started to land in Nassau.
The US coastguard brought the sick into a hanger at the private Odyssey Aviation airstrip, which was packed with journalists, aid workers and members of the Government and military planning evacuations.
Officials confirmed that currently only helicopters could gain access to the worst hit islands as all the airstrips needed to be assessed before planes could land. Teams had arrived to carry out the work today, but many strips were under water.
Raevyn Bootle, 18, was at the airstrip hoping that her mother, aunt and grandmother would soon be evacuated from Treasure Quay in Abaco.
“We made the first contact on Tuesday after the telephones went down at 11am on Sunday, so at least I now know that they are OK,” she said.
“But we don’t have any homes left, everything is completely destroyed, just wiped away.”
Ensuring people are safe is only the beginning. Abaco and Grand Bahama islands, with a combined population of about 70,000, are two of the largest islands in the country.
Even as people were brought into Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, it was unclear where they would go.
Ms Bootle said: “I don’t know where they can go, there will be a huge amount of people completely homeless and they will now have no jobs and no way to rebuild their lives.
“It is basically devastation, there is nothing left and now we need help, we need supplies.”
Peter Turnquest, the deputy prime minister and minister of finance, said the government intends to make formal appeals for assistance as it will take “billions” to rebuild the islands.
“With approximately 70 per cent of the homes under water, we anticipate tremendous social and economic dislocation and disruption in the short term,” he said.
Hurricane Dorian, meanwhile, pushed its way northward off the Florida shoreline with reduced but still dangerous 105mph winds on a projected course that could sideswipe Georgia and the Carolinas. An estimated three million people in the four states were warned to evacuate.
Donald Trump said last night: “We got lucky in Florida, very, very lucky indeed.” He said he hoped the US would also “get lucky” in South and North Carolina and Georgia.