The Wall Street Journal - 03.09.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. ***** Tuesday, September 3, 2019 |A

Hurricane Dorian left streets flooded in Nassau, Bahamas, on Monday as it battered the islands.

JOHN MARC NUTT/REUTERS

will search all the way through the night and into the morning, but I think we all should be prepared to move into the worst outcome.” The 75-foot Conception had been chartered for a three-day diving expedition led by Kristy Finstad of Worldwide Diving Adventures and was due back in Santa Barbara on Tuesday, according to a posting on that company’s website and Brett

Harmeling, Ms. Finstad’s brother. The first distress call went out just before 3:30 a.m. Mon- day. The Conception was moored near Platt’s Harbor on the northern side of Santa Cruz Island, a popular destina- tion for divers that is part of

the Channel Islands National Park about 25 miles south of Santa Barbara. In a recording of the radio call, a man’s voice says, “May- day! Mayday! Mayday! Concep- tion...north side, Santa Cruz.” A voice responds, “Vessel in distress, this is Coast Guard.” The distress caller says: “I can’t breathe.” Shirley Hansen was aboard her boat, the Grape Escape, moored several hundred feet away, when she was awakened by five men from the Concep- tion banging on her own vessel’s hull. The crew escaped on a dinghy, and told Mrs. Hansen that a bad fire had broken out on Conception, she recalled. One man had a broken leg, Mrs. Hansen said. Two of the men again searched the water near the Conception but didn’t locate any additional survivors. The men were distraught, and said they had celebrated a birth- day party for one of the ship’s passengers on Sunday evening. “You felt so helpless to see this in the blackness—just these flames. It engulfed this

whole boat,” Mrs. Hansen said. The Conception burned down to the water line and sank around 7:20 a.m. in 64 feet of water, officials said. Mr. Brown said an overnight boat fire in a remote area was “the worst-case scenario that you can have.” Coast Guard records show the Conception was last in- spected in February, and was in full compliance with regula- tory requirements, Capt. Roch- ester said. Passengers slept below deck, Mr. Brown said. An employee of Truth Aquatics, which owns the ship, declined to comment. Company owner Glen Fritzler didn’t re- turn an email seeking comment. The National Transporta- tion Safety Board has dis- patched a team to the site, board member Jennifer Ho- mendy said. Mr. Harmeling said his sis- ter was an experienced diver. Speaking by phone Monday afternoon, he said he hadn’t re- ceived any news about her. “She’s a strong, adventur- ous, amazing woman,” he said.

Dozens of people are feared dead after a Monday morning fire destroyed a diving boat in Southern California, an event likely to rank among the na- tion’s worst maritime trage- dies in recent years. Four bodies had been recovered from the wreck of the Conception, which sank near Santa Cruz Island, Santa Bar- bara County Sheriff Bill Brown said at a press conference. An- other four bodies had been lo- cated on the ocean floor, he said. Five of the six crew members were rescued, but 26 people were still missing. Officials said Monday that they were working to stabilize the sunken vessel and search for the remaining passengers as they investigate what caused the fire and what pre- vented most of the 39 people on board from escaping. “This isn’t a day that we wanted to wake up to for La- bor Day, and it’s a very tragic event,” Coast Guard Capt. Monica Rochester said. “We

BYJIMMYVIELKIND

Dive Boat Burns and Sinks; 34 Feared Dead

‘You felt so helpless to see this in the blackness,’ said a nearby boater.

Incidence after eight years

Source: American Medical Association

*Death or one of five major obesity or diabetes-related conditions

Composite*

Mortality from all causes

Atrial fibrillation

Coronary artery disease

Heart failure

Nephropathy

Cerebrovascular disease

30.8% 47.7%

17.

10.

13.

7.

11.

7.

18.

6.

16.

6.

5.

4.

Bariatricsurgery Groupthatdidn't undergosurgery

U.S. NEWS

hurricane-force winds would ex- tend far from the center, regard- less of where it was positioned. Dorian, which was a Cate- gory 5 storm for more than 24 hours before being down- graded to Category 4 Monday morning, is the strongest hurricane on modern record to hit the Bahamas. Sustained winds, which had reached 185 miles an hour Sunday, decreased to about 130 mph late Monday, the hurricane center said. Bahamas Power & Light Co., which provides power to roughly 100,000 customers, saw a number of outages—with power intentionally cut in some areas—as a result of Dorian, including the accidental loss of power to the entire island of New Providence early Monday. Footage aired on ZNS Baha- mas showed homes, vehicles and lampposts almost sub- merged by flooding, and water sloshing inside a house, with sofas bobbing around. Much of the damage to homes in the Bahamas may not be covered by insurance. “The ‘protection gap’ in the region is significant,” ratings firm A.M. Best Co. said in a June 2019 re- port on the Caribbean insurance industry. Of the estimated $32 billion overall economic loss in the Caribbean in 2017 from hurricanes, including Irma and Maria, only $5 billion was insured, representing a gap of more than 80%, Best said. In Florida, mandatory evacuation orders were issued for low-lying and other at-risk areas in 12 counties, from Palm Beach in South Florida to Nas- sau on the Georgia border, according to the state’s Division of Emergency Management. Other counties issued volun- tary evacuation orders. A hurricane warning was in effect from Jupiter Inlet in Palm Beach County to Ponte Vedra Beach in northern Florida. Jupi- ter residents reported rains from the hurricane’s outer

bands Monday afternoon. A wind gust of 43 mph was reported at Miami-Opa Locka Ex- ecutive Airport, forecasters said. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday the storm posed a serious threat to the state and urged residents to heed local officials’ instructions. “The storm is stalling very close to our coast,” he said. “The movement that it makes is going to have a lot of impact on Floridians.” Mr. DeSantis said 72 nursing homes and assisted-living facil- ities along the coast had been evacuated. Some hospitals also had begun evacuations, or planned to, he said. Florida Power & LightCo. said Monday it had some 17,000 utility workers ready to respond to outages. States of emergency were in effect in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. Along a coastal highway Monday afternoon on the bar- rier island near Melbourne, Fla.—where an evacuation or- der was in effect—almost all businesses were closed, many boarded up. Some people am- bled along the beach, where the surf was getting rough. One place that hadn’t yet closed was Ichabod’s Bar & Grille in Indialantic, where a crowd of patrons sat at the counter and on the patio. Ste- phen Hughey, a 42-year-old software engineer, said he had come to check out the beach. He planned to ride out the storm with his wife and daugh- ter at their home in Melbourne about 6 miles inland. He stocked up on food, alcohol and plenty of charcoal and propane to cook swordfish, steaks and lobster tails. “This is a serious storm,” said Mr. Hughey, a Florida na- tive. “The only saving grace is if it stays to its projected path” off the coast. —Leslie Scism contributed to this article.

MELBOURNE, Fla.—Hurri- cane Dorian hovered over the northwestern Bahamas Mon- day, killing at least five people, wiping out thousands of homes and leaving an entire island without power. The powerful storm was expected to near Florida late Tuesday. The storm was “showing es- sentially no motion” Monday afternoon, prolonging the bat- tering of the Bahamas, the Na- tional Hurricane Center said. It made landfall in Grand Bahama Island Sunday night after tear- ing through the Abaco Islands. The storm is forecast to ap- proach dangerously close to Florida late Tuesday through Wednesday, and then turn north, skirting the coast and coming perilously near Georgia and South Carolina Wednesday night and Thursday. Prime Minister Hubert Min- nis said Monday that the Royal Bahamas Police Force had con- firmed five deaths in Abaco, adding that initial reports from the Abaco Islands are that “devastation is unprecedented and extensive.” “We know that there are a number of people in Grand Ba- hama who are in serious distress,” Mr. Minnis said. As many as 13,000 homes may have been severely dam- aged or destroyed, leaving many people without shelter, according to an initial assessment by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent So- cieties. About 350,000 people live in the Bahamas, which con- sists of many islands, according to its 2010 census. Although Dorian wasn’t projected to make landfall in Flor- ida, federal forecasters warned that “only a small deviation of the track toward the west would bring the core of the hurricane onshore,” and that a life- threatening storm surge and

BYARIANCAMPO-FLORES ANDERINAILWORTH

Hurricane Hammers

Bahamas, Nears U.S.

but not that the surgery caused the effects. Still, the study adds to pre- vious research suggesting that bariatric surgery may be an effective treatment for severe, costly chronic conditions in people with excess weight and diabetes, experts said. Studies over more than two decades have shown that bariatric surgery can rid some patients of their diabetes, or help them get off certain medications. “It’s a pretty impressive re- duction in those cardiac risks—not a borderline finding at all,” said Eric DeMaria, chief of the division of general and bariatric surgery at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. “It makes you wonder why we don’t have wider adoption of these treatments.” He is presi- dent of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery and wasn’t involved in the study. The findings offer a poten- tial path for patients whose diabetes and heart conditions aren’t helped by other means, said Steven Nissen, chief aca- demic officer of the Heart and Vascular Institute at the Cleveland Clinic and senior author of the new study. Bariatric surgery is gener- ally recommended for patients who are 100 pounds or more over their ideal weight; have a body-mass index of 40, or a BMI of 35 along with diabetes, high blood pressure or other related condition; and can’t lose weight and improve their health by other means. Pa- tients with lower BMIs also get the surgery under some circumstances. Body-mass index is a calculation based on height and weight. An estimated 228,000 bariatric surgeries were per- formed in 2017, according to the American Society for Met- abolic and Bariatric Surgery. Bariatric surgery isn’t a cure-all. It has risks, though improved techniques have made the procedures safer, Dr. Aminian said. It is also expen- sive, costing as much as $30,000, and not always covered by insurance.

Bariatric surgery may sub- stantially lower the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other major forms of cardio- vascular disease, in addition to helping patients lose weight, according to new research published Monday in the Jour- nal of the American Medical Association. Analyzing the electronic health records over eight years of 13,722 obese patients with Type 2 diabetes and other high-risk health prob- lems, researchers at the Cleve- land Clinic found that those who had bariatric surgery— also known as metabolic or weight-loss surgery—were 39% less likely to experience a heart- or stroke-related event than those who had standard medical care. The surgery patients were also 41% less likely to die from any cause. Those effects were huge, said Ali Aminian, a bariatric surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic and lead author. The study was observa- tional, he cautioned, meaning that it showed an association,

BYBETSYMCKAY

Weight-Loss Surgery

Shown to Help Heart

5-day probable track area

Dorian’s actual path

Location at 5 p.m. Monday

5p.m.Aug.

2p.m.Sat.

2p.m.Fri.

2p.m.Thurs.

2p.m.Wed.

2p.m.Tues.

5p.m. Aug.

Mandatory evacuation areas

Projected path as of 5 p.m. Monday

Atlantic Ocean

M

on

da

y’s

fo

re

ca

st

Au g.

(^27)
fo
rec
as
t
Aug
. (^29)
for
ec
as
t
Au
g.
31
fo
re
ca
st
Shifting Paths
ForecastsofDorian’strack
havefluctuatedinthepast
week,makingitdifficultto
predictwhere,orif,thestorm
willmakelandfallintheU.S.
ForecastsofDorian’strack
havefluctuatedinthepast
week,makingitdifficultto
predictwhere,orif,thestorm
willmakelandfallintheU.S.
Sources: NOAA (storm track); State of Georgia, Office of Gov. Ron DeSantis,
South Carolina Emergency Management Division (evacuation areas)
Rescue workers in Santa Barbara, Calif., move one of the recovered bodies from the wreck of the Conception early Monday.
DANIEL DREIFUSS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Wall Street Journal - 03.09.2019

Get our desktop app

Company

Features

Documentation

Resources