OFFICIAL: PREPARE FOR
HUGE DEATH TOLL IN
BAHAMAS - Dead bodies in
the streets, in the churches,
everywhere . . .

6 September, 2019

The Bahamas death toll from Hurricane Dorian is likely to soar, the health minister warns. “The public need to prepare for unimaginable information about the death toll and the human suffering," Dr. Duane Sands said.

“It’s going to be huge," Bahamas health minister Dr. Duane Sands said of the death toll after Hurricane Dorian.

“We have four morticians in Abaco embalming because we have run out of coolers. (to store dead bodies)”

“Literally hundreds, up to thousands of people are still missing," said Joy Jibrilu, director general of the Bahamas' Ministry of Tourism.

Adrian Farrington, a 38-year-old Abaco father, watched a powerful storm surge swallow his young son.

While sitting on a gurney in a room at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) in Nassau yesterday, Farrington, a resident of Murphy Town, told The Nassau Guardian, “My leg was numb, but I was still trying to stay afloat with my son. After about an hour of treading water and bleeding, I noticed…some fins swimming along the houses.

“So, I grabbed my son and I put him on top the roof. The water was high on the roof.”

Farrington said his son, Adrian Farrington Jr., 5, kept crying.

“I keep telling him, ‘Don’t cry. Close your month. Don’t cry. Keep breathing. Don’t cry. Close your mouth,’” he said.

Farrington said the water was “so high I could’ve taken my elbow and I could’ve put it on the roof to get up on the roof”.

“But before I could sit on the roof to hold him, the gust from the hurricane dragged him across the roof back into the surge on the next side,” he said.

Farrington added, “I still could remember him reaching for me and calling me, ‘Daddy.’”

He said he pushed debris aside and rushed to get to the other side where his son had fallen.

However, Farrington said he could not see anything when he went underwater.

“I was like feeling to see if I could feel some kind of cloth, some kind of clothes, some kind of skin, flesh, tennis, something,” he said while fighting back tears.

One resident of Abaco who is still there gives this report. - "Plenty of deaths," "Unreal," "Dead bodies in the streets, in the churches, everywhere," "People going crazy," "Rationing of food and water."

There are so many dead bodies, they have resorted to throwing them on flatbed trucks, out in the open, to haul them away (as seen in photo above.)

Living conditions 'rapidly

deteriorating' after storm in

Bahamas - aid group

Reuters,

7 September, 2019

NASSAU, Bahamas (Reuters) - Thousands of displaced people are living in “rapidly deteriorating” conditions in the worst-hit parts of the Bahamas six days after Hurricane Dorian made landfall, the United Nations World Food Programme warned on Saturday.

The warning came as aid groups rushed emergency help to the storm-ravaged islands and officials warned a death toll of 43 was likely to spike higher as the number of missing among the archipelago nation’s 400,000 residents becomes clear.

Even as the aid ships and aircraft headed in, thousands fled the devastation, some abandoning hard-hit Great Abaco Island to seek safety in the capital, Nassau, and others heading to Florida for shelter, supplies and perhaps jobs.

Some 90 percent of the homes, buildings and infrastructure in Marsh Harbour, where Dorian rampaged for almost two full days as one of the strongest Caribbean hurricanes on record, were damaged, the World Food Programme said. It noted that thousands of people were living in a government building, a medical centre and an Anglican church that survived the storms, but had little to no access to water, power and sanitary facilities.

“The needs remain enormous,” WFP spokesman Herve Verhoosel said in an email Saturday. “Evacuations are slowly taking place by ferry, as hundreds of residents reportedly flee daily.”

One of those who fled Abaco was 19-year-old Isaiah Johnson, who was staying in a hotel in Nassau with his mother and three sisters after the storm’s 200 mile per hour (320 kph) winds destroyed their homes.

A wealthy friend had paid for a two-week stay, but after that it was unclear where they would go.

His mother was already searching for work in the United States, Johnson said, reckoning that jobs would be hard to find in Nassau.

“Two weeks might be enough time for me to figure things out,” Johnson said on Saturday. “For my mom, I’m not so sure.”

A cruise ship with more than 1,000 evacuees arrived in south Florida on Saturday. Some had small children or ageing relatives who they hoped to find safe lodging for before returning to try to repair or rebuild their island homes.

The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy were shipping in relief supplies and had already rescued some 290 people from isolated areas in the islands. The U.S. Agency for International Development said it raised its allocation of aid to the Bahamas by $1 million, to $2.8 million in total and had moved enough emergency supplies for 44,000 people to the islands.

Some 70,000 people were in need of food and shelter, the WFP estimated, and private forecasters estimated that some $3 billion in insured property was destroyed or damaged in the Caribbean.

Dorian pounded parts of North Carolina’s Outer Banks Islands on Friday. On Saturday, Sue Jones, a 22-year resident of the town of Frisco on the islands, said a storm surge sent 14 to 16 inches (36 to 40 cm) of water into the lowest level of her home, and she spent the day cutting sheetrock from the walls and clearing out water.

By 5 p.m. ET (2100 GMT), Dorian was a still-powerful post-tropical cyclone with 100 mile per hour (160 kph) winds, equivalent to the wind speed of a Category 2 hurricane, the National Hurricane Center said.

It was located about 50 miles (80 km) south-southwest of Halifax, Nova Scotia, at that time and due to make landfall in the next few hours, the NHC said.

Dorian hit the Bahamas earlier in the week with Category 5 winds, with some gusts topping 200 miles per hour (320 kph).

LARGE NUMBER OF DEAD FEARED

The medical chief of staff at Princess Margaret Hospital in Nassau, Dr. Caroline Burnett-Garraway, said two refrigerated, 40-foot trucks would be needed to hold the “staggering” number of bodies that were expected to be found.

The American Red Cross said it had committed an initial $2 million to help the Bahamas recover from the hurricane, with food, water and shelter and other necessities.

“Our relief operation is growing, but we are also facing serious challenges in terms of delivering aid,” Red Cross spokeswoman Jennifer Eli said. “Even search-and-rescue choppers haven’t been able to reach some people because there’s no place to land.”

Near an area called The Mudd in Marsh Harbour, a commercial hub, a Reuters witness reported most houses levelled, the body of a man lying near a main street and dead dogs floating in water.

The risk of outbreaks of diarrhoea and waterborne diseases is high as drinking water may be tainted with sewage, according to the Pan American Health Organization.

Travis Newton, a 32-year-old carpenter who survived the storm in Marsh Harbour, said he arrived in Nassau on Saturday morning with his family, trying to find a safe place to live.

He said residents of the town foraged for food and water in the wreckage of damaged stores after the storm passed.

“We had to survive, we had to make it happen, we had to find food, water, where we were aid couldn’t get to us, we had to find what we could from the damaged stores,” Newton said. “Everybody needs to get out of that place.”