Internet inflates Dorian death toll, govt. official says
Dorian knocks out power to 400,000 homes, businesses in Nova Scotia
The Bahamas government is not suppressing the death toll from Hurricane Dorian, its health minister said, calling reports on social media “false.” Meanwhile, the storm lashes Nova Scotia on its way to Newfoundland.
TORONTO — The Bahamas’ Health Minister said Sunday that the government is in no way suppressing Hurricane Dorian’s death toll, and are tallying confirmed deaths that have arrived at the morgue.
With survivors reporting on social media that they have personally counted scores of dead bodies, and others asking why the government isn’t telling the truth about the number of individuals who died in the Abacos and on Grand Bahama Island during Dorian’s catastrophic Category 5 winds, Health Minister Duane Sands said the narrative is “false.”
The public, he said, should have a better appreciation for the task facing the Bahamas, which has U.S. search and recovery teams, cadaver dogs and U.S. Coast Guard helicopters combing the devastation in search of missing individuals.
Meanwhile, teams have begun setting up field hospitals, including a mobile floating hospital to cover a number of the Abaco cays, and the government is preparing to build temporary shelter facilities for storm victims.
“I am actually a bit concerned that the focus has been for some people the body count,” Sands said. “It is not the priority. The priority is find those people for their loved ones who are missing them; to take care, provide comfort to those people who are hurt, who are suffering, that’s the priority. To put food in people’s bellies, water in their throat.”
Still, the government is searching for missing individuals and bodies.
On Sunday, the death toll was upped from 43 to 44 after search teams late Saturday recovered one body in Abaco. Dorian also was blamed for five deaths in the U.S. Southeast and one in Puerto Rico, bringing the overall death toll to 50.
“We heard there were all of these bodies in a particular area so teams from the United States, from the Bahamas and Jamaica and other places went out and we recovered one body yesterday,” Sands said.
“We’ve heard the numbers, a 1,000, 200, 500, 600. We’ve heard all of the claims,” he added.
“And the language I have used and the language that the prime minister has used and all of the Cabinet, and the National Emergency Management Agency, has been a description of the number of confirmed deaths, these are people in the morgue.”
Whatever that number is, he said, the government is ready.
Planes, cruise ships and yachts were evacuating people from the Abaco Islands and officials were trying to reach areas still isolated by flooding and debris.
The country’s National Emergency Management Agency said it was sending in extra staff because operations had been hampered by the storm’s impact on local workers. The agency said it was setting up shelters or temporary housing for the newly homeless across the islands and appealed for Bahamians to take in storm victims.
Meanwhile, Dorian, which later walloped North Carolina, lashed at far-eastern Canada with hurricane-force winds for much of Sunday, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people before beginning to weaken.
Dorian hit near the city of Halifax on Saturday, ripping roofs off apartment buildings, toppling a huge construction crane and uprooting trees. There were no reported deaths in Canada, though the storm was blamed for at least 50 elsewhere along its path.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Sunday night that the post-tropical cyclone was centered about 25 miles eastnortheast of St. Anthony, Newfoundland.
Its top sustained winds had fallen to 60 mph, after being above the 74 mph threshold of hurricane force earlier in the day. It was heading to the northeast, roughly up the St. Lawrence River, at 23 mph.
The track was taking the storm near or over northwestern Newfoundland or eastern Labrador and then out over the North Atlantic.
Nova Scotia officials asked people in the province to stay off the roads so crews could safely remove trees and debris and restore power.
The government said up to 700 Canadian troops would be fanning out across the Maritimes to help restore electricity, clear roadways and evacuate residents in flooded areas
Nova Scotia Power Inc. chief executive Karen Hutt said over 400,000 Nova Scotia Power customers lost power at the peak of the storm and 50,000 had since been restored.
About 80% of Nova Scotia’s homes and businesses were blacked out — the highest in the company’s history. Hutt said some customers could remain without service for days.
On Prince Edward Island, about 75% of homes and businesses had no electricity Sunday, according to the province’s Public Safety Department.