Hurricane Dorian - August/September 2019 #2

[imstilla.grandma]

When asked how Dorian compared to Hurricane Juan in 2003, which downed millions of trees in N.S. and led to severe damage throughout the city, Robichaud said it’s difficult to compare hurricanes but noted that Dorian’s winds were wider spread.

With Juan, the tree and infrastructure damage was concentrated along the right of the storm track, from Halifax up into the north shore and Prince Edward Island, Robichaud said.

For Dorian, the impacts are “all over the Maritimes,” ranging into southeastern New Brunswick and one end of Nova Scotia to the other, Robichaud said, even Dorian’s “peak intensity” wasn’t quite as high as Juan’s.
Dorian cleanup sees Nova Scotia Power facing largest outage in company history | The Star

 

[imstilla.grandma]

When asked how Dorian compared to Hurricane Juan in 2003, which downed millions of trees in N.S. and led to severe damage throughout the city, Robichaud said it’s difficult to compare hurricanes but noted that Dorian’s winds were wider spread.

With Juan, the tree and infrastructure damage was concentrated along the right of the storm track, from Halifax up into the north shore and Prince Edward Island, Robichaud said.

For Dorian, the impacts are “all over the Maritimes,” ranging into southeastern New Brunswick and one end of Nova Scotia to the other, Robichaud said, even Dorian’s “peak intensity” wasn’t quite as high as Juan’s.

 

[imstilla.grandma]

The wild horses that live on North Carolina islands are doing fine after Hurricane Dorian hit the coast, rescue groups say.

The horses on the state’s barrier islands weren’t evacuated for the hurricane, as they’re able to survive the storm by seeking higher ground, hiding out under oak trees and huddling together to brace against strong winds, the Charlotte Observer reported.

Now that the storm has passed, groups that work with the horses are giving updates on their well-being.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article234867117.html

 

[JudgeJoe]

Y’all have been busy today! I’m catching up after helping my daughter move back into her dorm today- delayed agaaaaain by a hurricane.
Did I read right that Dorian is bashing Canada & may reach SCOTLAND?!! Can’t believe it!

 

[MsFacetious]

CO F930 LEOPOLD I‏ @Comd_F930_LEOP 52m52 minutes ago
Sheltered in Bay of Fundy for #HurricaneDorian2019 last Sat. Measured windspeeds up to 60 kts, wave heights 4-5mtr, 985 hPa.

 

[Bravo]

Y’all have been busy today! I’m catching up after helping my daughter move back into her dorm today- delayed agaaaaain by a hurricane.
Did I read right that Dorian is bashing Canada & may reach SCOTLAND?!! Can’t believe it!

Yes it has hit our East Coast. Strange as far as Scotland goes. See link.
Hurricane Dorian could trigger HEATWAVE after Scots get hit with SNOW

 

[imstilla.grandma]

Heartbreaking:

"As the kennel dogs were still howling and crying," said Telfort. "We experienced all of that until they were not even crying anymore."

The silence represented the death of more than 220 dogs and 50 cats.
‘We could not protect them:’ 220 dogs, 50 cats drowned at Bahamas humane society during Dorian

 

[Bravo]

Oh gawd those poor animals. Heartbreaking.

 

[KALI]

I would be interested to see how the politicians live in the Bahamas. Do they live in mansions? Curious minds want to know. Like mine.

A volunteer firefighter in the Bahamas called on government officials to come to the remote islands hit by Dorian. "People are getting violent, angry, upset, and we're trying to get our government officials- if you guys do see this, please come down here and show your faces," Greg Johnson told CBS News on Treasure Cay.

"We need you guys to show your faces here, so the people can understand and know that you guys care," Johnson said. "At this point in time, we are on our own, and the U.S. is the only place that is helping us."

Dorian still slamming Canada with hurricane-force winds

 

[KALI]

That would break my heart to no end. Has anyone heard any updates on the lovely woman who took 97 dogs into her home? I'm praying they all survived.

Heartbreaking:

"As the kennel dogs were still howling and crying," said Telfort. "We experienced all of that until they were not even crying anymore."

The silence represented the death of more than 220 dogs and 50 cats.
‘We could not protect them:’ 220 dogs, 50 cats drowned at Bahamas humane society during Dorian

 

[MsFacetious]

That would break my heart to no end. Has anyone heard any updates on the lovely woman who took 97 dogs into her home? I'm praying they all survived.

Yes, they are all fine. I saw an article where $100,000 was raised for her too.

 

[MsFacetious]

Heartbreaking:

"As the kennel dogs were still howling and crying," said Telfort. "We experienced all of that until they were not even crying anymore."

The silence represented the death of more than 220 dogs and 50 cats.
‘We could not protect them:’ 220 dogs, 50 cats drowned at Bahamas humane society during Dorian

I can’t even. My dogs are all rescues, even my horse. Letting them go wouldn’t have done any good either. They’d not have been able to swim long enough to survive.

 

[Gardener1850]

 

[Gardener1850]

‘Not the priority’: Bahamas not lying about Dorian deaths, health minister says

The Bahamas’ minister of health says the government is in no way suppressing Hurricane Dorian’s death toll, and are tallying confirmed deaths that have arrived at the morgue.

With people 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 Hurricane Dorian’s catastrophic Category 5 winds, Health Minister Duane Sands said the narrative is “false” and unfortunate.

[...]

“I am actually a bit concerned that the focus has been for some people the body count,” Sands told the Miami Herald in an interview. “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.

“We head 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.

[...]

“We have to prepare for whatever inevitability and so whether it’s a thousand, or 2,000 or 500 body bags, we need to have the ability to make sure that every single remain can be treated with dignity and managed appropriately,” Sands said. “So yes, there are refrigerated coolers in Grand Bahama; yes there are refrigerated coolers in Abaco; yes there are body bags; yes we need to make sure we have enough.

“There are teams on the ground right now who are tasked deliberately, teams greater than 100 people, tasked with the recovery and retrieval of missing persons,” he added. “They would have retrieved one yesterday after covering many, many square miles.”

Sands said the government is also trying to keep a database of missing individuals but the damage to cell towers, has made communications difficult. He noted that his wife’s father was missing and was not found until two days ago. It took time to learn of his fate because of the communications issues.

“There are many people missing who may have perished or been injured. There are other people who are defined as missing because they have no way of letting their loved ones know where they are. And so as we go through this nightmare, all of these moving parts, much of it having to be done by persons who themselves have either lost loved ones or property.”

Read more: ‘Not the priority’: Bahamas not lying about Dorian deaths, health minister says

 

[Gardener1850]

Living conditions 'rapidly deteriorating' after storm in Bahamas, says aid group

NASSAU, Bahamas — 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 aid to the storm-ravaged islands and officials warned that an official death toll of 43 was likely to spike higher as the number of missing among the archipelago nation’s 400,000 residents becomes clearer.

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% 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 center and an Anglican church that had 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.”

Read more: Living conditions 'rapidly deteriorating' after storm in Bahamas, says aid group

 

[Gardener1850]

Dazed and weary, Hurricane Dorian refugees descend on Bahamas capital of Nassau

NASSAU, Bahamas – They straggle through the door in small groups, uncertainty written across their faces.

A green or yellow band wraps around each person’s wrist. Green bands are for those with someplace to stay the night, maybe with friends or family.

They’re the easy ones.

Yellow bands are harder.

Those wrap the wrists of Hurricane Dorian refugees who have no one to help them here in Nassau, the capital island of this coral archipelago nation still staggered by the biggest hurricane to hit the Bahamas, a terrifyingly violent storm that sat atop neighboring Abaco and Grand Bahama for days.

Nonprofits, from the Red Cross to Rotary and church groups, are rapidly improving refugee processing on Nassau, staged out of a stifling warehouse-size tent filled with donated supplies and energetic volunteers who are processing the wrist-banded refugees.

“They wasn’t doing anything in Abaco. So it’s great to see people caring. It’s so nice,” said evacuee Cecil Grant, 31, as he cradled his sleeping daughter, Yalissa, 7 months.

[...]

All day Sunday, refugees poured into the processing center as volunteers asked them to take only a few days’ worth of clothing and children played with donated toys, the immediate crisis past. The sound of Haitian creole began to fill the room as more and more Haitian-born refugees arrived.

Rescue groups are also now reaching Abaco with shiploads of supplies and equipment. The Red Cross expected its cargo boat to arrive in Marsh Harbour on Sunday, bringing both aid and Restoring Family Links teams to help trace missing or out-of-context people.

While cellphones work intermittently in Marsh Harbour, people remaining on the island are scrounging for gasoline to power generators and recharge their phones.

In Nassau, the Red Cross had more than 200 volunteers collecting and distributing supplies and food directly to evacuees and also to government-run shelters.

USAID Administrator Mark Green met with Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Minnis on Sunday after briefly touring Abaco, pledging the U.S. government’s full support. The U.S. military is assisting with relief efforts being led by USAID, which has brought in 89 people and four search dogs to pick through the rubble while simultaneously preparing for a long road to recovery.

The agency brought in 47 metric tons of relief supplies from the Miami warehouse to help an estimated 44,000 people, USAID officials said, and about $2.8 million has been allocated to support response efforts.

Dazed and weary, Hurricane Dorian refugees descend on Bahamas capital of Nassau

 

[Gardener1850]

Silence, devastation mark Bahamas town; but some are staying

MARSH HARBOUR, Bahamas (AP) — The streets are filled with smashed cars, snapped power cables, shattered trees and deep silence.

At the airport and dock, hundreds of people clamor for seats on airplanes and berths on ships arriving with aid and departing with people who lost their homes when deadly Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas.

Nearly a week after disaster roared in from the sea, the rest of Marsh Harbour on Abaco island felt empty Saturday. A hot wind whistled through stands of decapitated pine trees and homes that collapsed during the most powerful hurricane in the northwestern Bahamas’ recorded history.

Rescue teams were still trying to reach some Bahamian communities isolated by floodwaters and debris after the disaster that killed at least 44 people, most of them on Abaco Island.

[...]

In Marsh Harbour’s Murphy Town neighborhood, on a hill overlooking the azure sea, Jackson Blatch and his son-in-law were already rebuilding. In a blazing midday sun they stripped damaged shingles from Blatch’s roofs and tossed them into his truck, parked below the eaves of a home he built by hand.

Like a few other Abaco residents, Blatch is staying on an island pulverized by nature.

“Everybody says, ‘Leave.’ Leave and go where?” Blatch asked. “My plan is to rebuild this island. I have a lot to offer.”

Unlike almost every other home on Abaco, Blatch’s house had little damage. He is a builder who prides himself on quality work. When mixing concrete, he never skimps, always precisely blending the recommended amounts of cement, sand and gravel for floors, columns and ceilings.

When he poured his walls and floors, he laced them thick with rebar, constructing a powerful skeleton that resisted the storm.

Instead of using the manufacturer-provided clips on his hurricane shutters, he used long screws on as many as possible to fix the shutters tight to the window frame.

When Dorian hit, it only managed to rip away the shutters with store-bought clips, and a few sections of shingles, leaving some of the Blatch family’s possessions wet but the structure and furnishings intact.

So Blatch has power from a generator, drinking water, food and the help of his son-in-law, 25-year-old Moses Monestine.

“I don’t have a mortgage. I don’t want to go to Nassau,” he said. “I don’t want to go to the United States. I don’t want to depend on anyone.”

Read more: Silence, devastation mark Bahamas town; but some are staying

 

[mickey2942]

"Home is more than four walls and a roof - it's the neighborhood where people live, their friends and neighbors, their livelihoods, comfort, and security for the future. Losing all these things at once is heartbreaking," said Jenelle Eli, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross, which is helping with the relief. "People are concerned about their next step, but also how they'll earn an income and what their lives will look like in the future."
"Like a nuclear bomb went off" -USAID's Green on Bahamas

I think that many of the folks affected probably are refugees in Bahamas, from Haiti, working there, under the table. Bahamas provides zero benefits for refugees.
This may explain a lot.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article234859067.html

Oh, oh...here is the next one that may hit land...
Tropical Storm Humberto could form from new system close to the Bahamas, 2nd system following Dorian’s path

 

[KALI]

Well, seeing as the bahamian government is doing little to help the people that reside on their lands, and dozens of charity groups and other nations ARE let's hope this becomes non-issue.
So far, I'm not impressed with the leaders of the nation of the Bahamas.
Thank goodness for these charity groups, the USA and other nations who are helping.
I cannot even imagine how awful it would be for these poor people if they only had their national leaders to depend on.
My opinion.

I think that many of the folks affected probably are refugees in Bahamas, from Haiti, working there, under the table. Bahamas provides zero benefits for refugees.
This may explain a lot.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article234859067.html

 

[margarita25]

I read that a lot of people hunkered down in shelters at buildings such as schools and churches. Have we seen any specific references as to how those shelters held up? Tia, was just wondering.