1,300 missing after ‘Dorian’

MIAMI, Florida (AFP) — Some 1,300 people are still unaccounted for in the Bahamas following Hurricane Dorian, officials said Thursday, down from the 2,500 previously reported.

The Bahamian National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) attributed the drop to cross-referencing names of missing persons with those in shelters.

“It’s very fluid,” NEMA spokesman Carl Smith told reporters at a press conference in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas.

The Bahamian authorities have put the death toll from the devastating Category 5 storm at 50 so far.

But they have said they expect that number to rise significantly and a former prime minister said he feared the final toll could be in the hundreds.

“Based upon information I have, based on my knowledge, there are hundreds of people who died,” the Nassau Guardian newspaper quoted former premier Hubert Ingraham as saying on Wednesday.

“I pay no attention to 50,” Ingraham said after touring hurricane-ravaged Abaco Island.

“Hundreds of people have died in Abaco, and significant numbers in Grand Bahama,” the other island severely damaged by the storm, he said.

“And I don’t make wild statements,” he said. “I don’t make uninformed statements.”

Bahamian police commissioner Anthony Ferguson was asked at the press conference about the search for victims of the storm.