LATIMES.COM S SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2019A
HOMELESSNESS IN L.A.
HAS SURGED 75%
IN SIX YEARS.
Tonight, more than 44,000 people will call the streets home. They are family and friends,
and they need our support. UCLA’s Mobile Clinic Project continues to serve this community
with free health care. And new mental health programs led by the UCLA Semel Institute offer
psychiatric treatment. With knowledge, we provide healing and hope.UCLA.EDU/100YEARS
TORONTO — Dorian ar-
rived on Canada’s Atlantic
coast Saturday with heavy
rain and powerful winds,
toppling a construction
crane in Halifax and knock-
ing out power for more than
300,000 people after leaving
43 dead in the Bahamas and
wreaking havoc on North
Carolina’s Outer Banks.
Residents of Nova Scotia
braced for heavy rainfall and
potential flooding along the
coast, as officials in Halifax
urged people to secure heavy
objects that might become
projectiles. Businesses were
encouraged to close early.
“We do not want the citi-
zens of Halifax roaming
downtown as the water is
coming in,” said Erica Fleck,
assistant chief of communi-
ty risk reduction in Halifax,
the provincial capital and
home to 400,000 people.
A crane toppled and
crashed into the side of a
downtown apartment build-
ing under construction. In
the city’s south end, a roof
was ripped off an apartment
complex, and firefighter Jeff
Paris said several apart-
ment buildings were being
evacuated. With the col-
lapsed crane and all the
downed trees and power
lines, it’s fortunate there are
no significant injuries or
deaths, he said.
As the hurricane death
toll continued to rise in the
Bahamas, which was racked
by sustained 185-mph winds
a week ago, its leader called
the devastation, “this hour
of darkness.”
Of the 43 fatalities ac-
counted for, 35 were on the
Abaco Islands and eight on
Grand Bahama, according
to Prime Minister Hubert
Minnis.
“We acknowledge that
there are many missing and
that the number of deaths is
expected to significantly in-
crease,” he said.
Search-and-rescue
teams were still trying Sat-
urday to reach some Baha-
mian communities isolated
by floodwaters and debris.
Several hundred people,
many of them Haitian immi-
grants, waited at Great Aba-
co’s Marsh Harbour in hopes
of leaving the disaster zone
on vessels arriving with aid.
Bahamian security forces
were organizing evacuations
on a landing craft. Other
boats, including yachts and
other private craft, were also
helping to evacuate people.
Avery Parotti, a 19-year-
old bartender, and her part-
ner, Stephen Chidles, a 26-
year-old gas station attend-
ant, had been waiting at the
port since 1 a.m. During the
hurricane, waves lifted a
yacht that smashed against
a concrete wall, which in
turn collapsed on their home
and destroyed it.
“There’s nothing left
here. There are no jobs,” said
Parotti, who hopes to start a
new life in the United States,
where she has relatives.
At least four deaths in the
Southeastern U.S. have
been blamed on Dorian. All
were men in Florida or North
Carolina who died in falls or
by electrocution while trim-
ming trees, putting up storm
shutters or otherwise get-
ting ready for the hurricane.
On Saturday, floodwa-
ters receded from North
Carolina’s Outer Banks,
leaving behind a muddy trail
of destruction. The storm’s
worst damage in the U.S. ap-
peared to be on Ocracoke Is-
land, N.C., which is popular
with tourists for its unde-
veloped beaches. Longtime
residents who waited out the
storm described strong but
manageable winds followed
by a wall of water that
flooded the first floors of
many homes and forced
some to await rescue from
their attics.
“We’re used to cleaning
up dead limbs and trash
that’s floating around,” said
Ocracoke resident and busi-
ness owner Philip Howard.
“But now it’s everything: pic-
nic tables, doors, lumber
that’s been floating around.”
Howard said by phone
Saturday that flooding at his
properties on the North Car-
olina island is 13 inches
higher than the levels
wrought by a storm in 1944,
which he said had long been
considered the worst. He
raised his home higher than
the 1944 flood level and still
got water inside.
“It’s overwhelming,” said
Howard, who owns the Vil-
lage Craftsmen, a store that
sells handcrafted pottery,
glass and kitchen items.
He said much of the mer-
chandise on the lower
shelves is ruined. Pieces of
pottery were floating around
inside.
Inside his house, the
floorboards were buckling
and curling up after beingwarped by the water, he said.
More than 1,100 Bahami-
ans arrived in Palm Beach,
Fla., after being evacuated
by cruise ship from their
hurricane-battered islands.
The Grand Celebration
cruise ship returned to its
home port after setting sail
Thursday for Freeport,
Grand Bahama, to deliver
more than 112 tons of sup-
plies and ferry dozens of
health workers and emer-
gency crews.
In Canada, the storm
made landfall Saturday eve-
ning near Sambro Creek,
about 15 miles south of Hali-
fax with maximum sus-
tained winds of 100 mph.
Forecasters said the cen-
ter of Dorian was expected
to move across Nova Scotia,
pass near or over Prince Ed-
ward Island, and then move
to Newfoundland and Lab-
rador on Sunday.As Bahamas toll rises, Dorian hits Nova Scotia
PAULETTE THOMPSON,left, and Reewa Hill
react upon arriving in Riviera Beach, Fla. They
evacuated from the Bahamas aboard a cruise ship.Brynn AndersonAssociated Press
RESIDENTSsalvage items amid the devastation in
Marsh Harbour on Great Abaco Island, Bahamas,
where hundreds hoped to leave aboard aid vessels.Brendan SmialowskiAFP/Getty Images‘We acknowledge
that there are
many missing and
that the number
of deaths is
expected to
significantly
increase.’
— Hubert Minnis,
Bahamian prime ministerCanada endures
outages and braces for
flooding. Bahamian
deaths reach 43.
associated press
they’re not acting as sol-
diers, they’re acting as
policemen and that’s not
their job — that’s not their
job,” Trump said Wednes-
day at a White House event.
“So, we’d like to get at least a
big proportion of them
home. We also have NATO
troops there. We’d like to
bring a big portion of them
home. So, we’re talking to
the Taliban, we’re talking to
the government, we’ll see
what happens.”
His focus on pulling out
U.S. troops has unsettled
some analysts who see the
Taliban as trying to take ad-
vantage of Trump’s eager-
ness to withdraw.
“You’re putting a lot on
the table right off the bat,”
said Seth Jones, director of
the transnational threats
project at the Center for
Strategic and International
Studies, a Washington think
tank. “That’s not negotiat-
ing from a position of
strength. You’re already sig-
naling a desire to leave.”
If peace in Afghanistan is
possible, he said, it would be
contingent on future talks
between the government
and the Taliban. However,
current and former Penta-
gon officials say they have lit-
tle expectation that any
kind of power-sharing agree-
ment would come together
quickly.
Trump faces a tricky
path if he brings troop levels
down sharply and the war
flares up again during his re-
election campaign. He then
would need to decide
whether to send U.S. forces
back in to bolster the gov-
ernment.
He has previously
pushed for troop withdraw-
als in Afghanistan and
Syria, only to backtrack af-
ter advisors warned that in-
surgent groups could re-
emerge.
“Trump wants to get out,
but even more than that, he
probably doesn’t want a
great visible catastrophe
prior to the election,” sad
Jarrett Blanc, a former
State Department official
responsible for Afghanistan
during the Obama adminis-
tration.
With all those cross-cur-
rents, Secretary of State
Michael R. Pompeo, in an in-
terview Friday with KAKE-
TV in Wichita, Kan., listed
Afghanistan as one of the is-
sues that keeps him up at
night.
“We want to get that
right,” he said. “We have to
protect America from ter-
rorism threats, but we’ve
had an awful lot of boys and
girls killed there and we
want to make sure we strike
the right balance.”[Trump, from A6]
MARINESdisembark at Camp Bost, Helmand province, in 2017. President Trump has focused on withdrawal
from Afghanistan, but some analysts see the Taliban as trying to take advantage of his eagerness to pull out.Marcus YamLos Angeles Times