Section:GDN 1N PaGe:32 Edition Date:190906 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 5/9/2019 20:15 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
- The Guardian Friday 6 September 2019
32At least 20 dead
as hurricane in
Bahamas leads
to ‘generational
devastation’
Oliver Laughland
NassauThe offi cial death toll in the Bahamas
from Hurricane Dorian has reached
20 and is likely to rise , the country’s
prime minister said as he warned of
“generational devastation” in the
archipelago’s northern region.
Aerial video of the Abaco Islands,
which were hit hardest by Dorian,
showed the harbour, shops, work-
places, a hospital and airport landing
strips damaged or in pieces, with the
destruction frustrating rescue eff orts.
Dorian pummelled the area over the
weekend.
“So many families have been deeply
impacted,” said the prime minister,
Hubert Minnis, at a press conference.
“We ask you to pray for the families
and loved ones of the deceased.”
Minnis, who had just returned from
fl ying over the Abaco Islands , said he
was aware of reports of looting on the
islands. Dorian “has left generational
devastation across Abaco and Grand
Bahama”, he said.
Large areas remained inaccessi-
ble yesterday to rescue crews, who
continued to prioriti se emergency
evacuations, meaning the full scale
of devastation caused by the hurricane
was still not clear.
Mark Lowcock, the United Nations
under- secretary- general for human-
itarian aff airs and emergency relief
coordinator, said the agency estimate d
about 70,000 people in the northern
Bahamas remained in need of relief
assistance.
As many as 13,000 homes may have
been destroyed or severely damaged,
the International Federation of RedCross and Red Crescent Societies said.
At the main rescue centre in Nassau,
the capital city, US Coast Guard and
Royal Marines helicopters arrived
throughout the day bringing in doz-
ens of rescued people from the Abaco
Islands.
Rescue workers said that the chal-
lenge remained gargantuan because
of the level of destruction and the
remoteness of the northern islands.
With no functioning water systems in
accessible areas, workers had not been
able to establish a permanent rescue
site on the Abacos.
The Coast Guard had rescued 114
people by Wednesday afternoon. A
spokesman said that six helicopter
rescue crews had rescued some 60
critically injured people by Tuesday
evening.
Lt Keith Webb, a Royal Marines hel-
icopter co-pilot, said that his crew had
rescued a seven-week-old baby girl
who suff ered from acute sepsis in the
aftermath of Dorian. They had also res-
cued two children, aged six and seven,
suff ering from hypothermia.
Other recently evacuated Baha-
mians said they had endured days
without food and, in one case, had
witnessed a neighbour die in front of
them from cardiac arrest.
With many telephone lines down,
residents posted lists of missing loved
ones on social media. A Facebook post
by the media outlet Our News Baha-
mas had 2,000 comments, mainly
listing lost family.
Minnis said he had spoken to Don-
ald Trump earlier in the day. The US
president has suggested he may visit
the Bahamas in the wake of Dorian.
“I guess you would call it a Brit-
ish protectorate, but I will do a lot,”
Trump told reporters on Wednesday.
“We’re waiting for a call – they’re hav-
ing a lot of trouble with the telephones
over there as you can imagine – from
the prime minister and we’re helping
a lot.”
The British government has dis-
patched a team of disaster relief
specialists from the Department for
International Development that is
co ordinating aid operations based
primarily from a Royal Navy landing
vessel, RFA Mounts Bay , anchored
close to the Abaco Islands.Evacuees’
stories
‘I thought
no one was
coming to
rescue us’
Oliver LaughlandK
athlyn Russell
collapsed on the
concrete as she
embraced the daughter
she had feared she
would never see again.
“My daughter. My daughter,” she
said, tears streaming, her voice, for a
few seconds, louder than the drone
of propellers that muffl es most
other sounds at the rescue centre on
Nassau in the Bahamas.
Russell, a housekeeper from Great
Abaco Island, had stayed inside
her home when Hurricane Dorian
pounded the Bahamas’ northern
islands over the weekend. But
after hours inside, her downstairs
fl ooded, the roof fl ew off and she
was left with no option but to run
outside and take her chances.
She left her home, clutching her
six-year-old grandson Chrishon with
both arms close to her chest.
“As I was running, the wind was
picking me up and licking me down,”
she told the Guardian. Somehow
she made it across the street to a
neighbour’s home.“I lifted my hands up and I said:
Lord, help me.”
But Dorian continued to pummel
the Bahamas for days as the slow-
moving category fi ve hurricane,
with its 185 mph winds, destroyed
most property on the Abaco islands,
brought boats on to land and felled
trees.
Russell was forced to fl ee again.
She made it to a shelter, sle eping for
three nights in a small room with 12
other people.
“I thought no one was coming to
rescue us,” said Chrishon, his bright
yellow T-shirt covered with three
large dirt stains. But on Wednesday
afternoon the two were evacuated
by plane, and reunited with family
in Nassau.
Gradually the reality dawned
on the 46-year-old grandmother:
“I have nothing left. Absolutely
nothing. Only the clothes that I have
on my body right now.”
The offi cial death toll in the
Bahamas was revised on Wednesday
night to 20, but it is expected to
continue to rise as the crisis on the
archipelago’s northernmost islands
continues to unfold.
“I still don’t think we’ve seen all
the body bags yet,” said one senior70,000
An estimate by the United Nations
of the number of people in the
northern Bahamas in need of help13,000
Number of homes destroyed or
badly damaged, mainly in the
north, according to the Red CrossRELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws