Devastation prompts Bahamas exodus

Bahamians who lost everything in the devastating passage of Hurricane Dorian were scrambling Saturday to escape the worst-hit islands by sea and air, after the powerful storm left at least 43 people dead with officials fearing a “significantly” higher toll.

A loosely coordinated armada of passenger planes, helicopters and both private and government boats and ships — including redirected cruise liners — was converging on the horribly battered Abaco Islands to help with evacuations, both to Nassau and to the US mainland.

Thousands of miles (kilometers) north, Canadians were hunkering down along the country’s Atlantic coast as Dorian, packing 100 mph (155 kph) winds, began knocking down trees and tossing debris across the region.

Dorian was expected to make landfall Saturday evening near the port city of Halifax, home to Canada’s Atlantic fleet.

Television images showed a downpour and howling winds in the empty streets of downtown Halifax as the outer edge of the storm approached. A crane collapsed onto an apartment building in the area and 300,000 households were without power.

For now in the Bahamian, supplies of food and water were adequate, Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said, although several witnesses from Abaco contested that.

Plans were being hammered out for constructing tents and other temporary accommodations, the Nassau Guardian reported, although Minnis said Nassau “cannot possibly accommodate” all the Abaco victims.

Evacuees began flowing out of the region as a cruise ship carrying 1,400 evacuees docked Saturday in Riviera Beach, Florida, CNN reported. All had documents to enter the US.

More than 260 Abacos residents arrived Friday in Nassau on a government-chartered ferry. Another, carrying 200, was set to leave on Saturday.

Residents said conditions on the islands were brutal and that the smell of unrecovered bodies, along with mounting piles of garbage, was oppressive and unsanitary.

Hundreds or even thousands of people were still missing, officials said, as search-and-rescue teams continued their grim retrievals and morticians with body bags began to arrive.

Minnis said the death toll — 35 so far in the Abacos and eight in Grand Bahama — was likely to climb “significantly.”

He called the loss of life “catastrophic and devastating.”

The final death toll “will be staggering,” Health Minister Duane Sands said earlier.

A UN World Food Program team estimated that 90 percent of buildings in Marsh Harbour were damaged.

UN relief officials said more than 70,000 people on Grand Bahama and Abaco were in need of assistance. The WFP was sending food and supplies.

The US Coast Guard, Britain’s Royal Navy and private organizations have been helping evacuate island residents to Nassau, hampered by damaged piers and airport runways.

The Coast Guard said Saturday, however, that all Bahamian ports had now reopened. It said it had deployed nine cutters to the islands and that six of its MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters had so far rescued 290 people.

Chamika Durosier was waiting early Saturday at the Abaco airport. The island, she said, was unsafe.

“The home that we were in fell on us,” she said. “We had to crawl — got out crawling. By the grace of God we are alive.”

She described the increasingly desperate plight of those left behind.

“People have no food. People have no water, and it’s not right. They should have been gone.

“Dead bodies are still around and it’s not sanitary.”

At Marsh Harbour’s commercial port, Miralda Smith, a Haitian national, had arrived overnight on foot and was waiting in sweltering heat with dozens of other evacuees for passage to Nassau.

“We have no water, no electricity — we’re dying,” she said. “It’s really catastrophic.”

Many evacuees were Haitian workers who had seen their makeshift homes in a shantytown known as The Mudd completely flattened.

Those who have made it to safety awaited news of loved ones.

Dorian, a monstrous Category 5 hurricane when it raked through the Bahamas, was buffeting southwestern Nova Scotia, Canada, on Saturday with landfall expected in the evening, the National Hurricane Center said at 5:00 pm (2100 GMT).

The Canadian Hurricane Centre predicted a landfall near Halifax and issued warnings for parts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was briefed on the storm.

“The safety of Canadians is our number one priority and we’re ready to help Atlantic Canada through this storm,” he said on Twitter.

Dorian was predicted to pass “near or over” Prince Edward Island overnight and parts of Newfoundland and Labrador on Sunday.

Earlier, Dorian brought flooding and power outages but no major damage to the coastal Carolinas and Virginia in the United States.