Here is some info from CNN on Hurricane Dorian.
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On Great Abaco, high winds remained Tuesday night, but the rain had subsided as residents emerged to see at the incredible devastation. Huge piles of rubble were what remained of businesses and homes wrecked by the strongest storm ever to hit the islands.
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| An aerial view of the devastation caused by Dorian on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas. |
It's difficult to tell whether one scene shows a neighborhood or an industrial center. The ruin was immense; the area had been turned into what looked from above like a floating landfill. Shipping containers were tossed among the rubble.
Brandon Clement, who was in a helicopter over the island, told CNN that even new homes constructed under more stringent building codes were destroyed by the storm. One older neighborhood is gone, he said.
"You can't tell that there are any homes there. It looks like a bunch of building materials were put in a big grinder and thrown on the ground," he said.
The Prime Minister told reporters after returning from an aerial tour of Great Abaco that he estimated there was damage to 60% of the homes there. .
"We have been attacked by a vicious, devastating storm (from which there was no defense)," Minnis told CNN.
Minnis said additional police and security forces will be sent to the Abacos on Wednesday morning to prevent violence or looting.
Fortunately, New Providence Island and the capital of Nassau, which generate much of the Bahamas tourist revenue, had not been touched, the Prime Minister said.
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| The Category 5 hurricane hit Great Abaco Island with sustained winds of 180 mph. |
Neighbors rescuing neighbors
On Grand Bahama Island, residents of Freeport fervently worked to rescue people in communities where the havoc wreaked by Dorian was much worse than expected.
With streets almost impassible due to high water and stranded vehicles and with pounding rain still falling and tropical storm force winds blowing, residents put together an ad hoc rescue group with boats and personal watercraft.
The rescue efforts are dangerous and harrowing, according to a CNN crew that watched rescued Bahamians brought to a bridge half-covered by water that was being used as a staging point.
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| Residents organized rescue teams Tuesday to save their neighbors. |
The CNN crew tried to drive around Grand Bahama Island, but many streets are either flooded or are blocked by submerged cars.
Dozens of people were going back and forth to help with the rescue. Some of the people rescued were utterly exhausted after spending all night clinging to their roofs or being stuck in their attics.
Freeport resident Howard Armstrong described how his wife drowned in front of him after the storm surge from Hurricane Dorian swamped their home, leaving them with only their heads were above the water.
After hours of waiting in the flooded house for rescue, Armstrong's wife succumbed to hypothermia and slipped under the water.
"She was gone so quickly," Armstrong said as he waited for his wife's body to be recovered.
Another man said he found his brother clinging to a tree and the brother's wife was last seen grasping a piece of cardboard.
Info on Hurricane Dorian from CNN:
Storm slowly moved out
Dorian inched away from the northern Bahamas after lingering over the islands for days, leaving catastrophic damage and people stranded in flooded buildings.
Since it smashed into the Abaco Islands as a Category 5 storm on Sunday, it knocked homes to the ground and flooded streets in the northern Bahamas.
"Right now, (we're) taking a beating," Bahamian lawmaker Iram Lewis told CNN from Freeport late Tuesday morning. "We need wheelchairs, hospital beds, we need walkers."
"Whatever you can send, we'll take it, because we are in trouble," he said.
Freeport resident Harold Williams said his son went out on a Jet Ski and heard people calling out. "Help! Help me, get out!" one said.
Williams said they went to get stranded relatives who had to wade out to the watercraft in chest-deep water.
"I don't think we've seen anything like this in our lifetime. Total destruction," Williams said.
