Bahamas struggles amid ruins

Belongings litter the ground in an area known as The Mudd in the Bahamas' Marsh Harbour. (AFP)

One week after Hurricane Dorian devastated the Bahamas, residents struggled amid the ruins Sunday, with many forced to seek refuge far from their shattered homes as the death toll from the top-intensity storm hit 43 in the islands.

The storm, now classified as a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to move soon into the North Atlantic after cutting a destructive swath through the Bahamas, up the US east coast and to eastern Canada.

In the Bahamas, people were still scrambling for shelter, with the lucky evacuees beginning to reunite with loved ones but the fate of uncounted others still in doubt.

Prime Minister Hubert Minnis warned the death toll — 35 so far in the Abaco Islands and eight in Grand Bahama — was likely to climb “significantly.”

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

Tropic Ocean Airways said it planned to fly supplies to hard-hit Marsh Harbour from Florida and bring out some 220 people to Nassau on a Delta Air Lines jet.

On Saturday, a cruise ship carrying 1,400 people docked in Riviera Beach, Florida, CNN reported. All had documents to enter the United States.

The Coast Guard said all Bahamian ports had now reopened. As of Sunday morning, it had five cutters providing support and five MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters taking part in search and rescue operations. It said 308 people had been rescued.

Many of those still waiting to leave Marsh Harbour are Haitian workers. The area where they lived — The Mudd — was almost completely wiped out by Dorian.

Haitians who have arrived in Nassau have accused the government of prioritizing native-born Bahamians for evacuation from Marsh Harbour over Haitian nationals.

Haitian diplomat Dorval Darlier, who flew from Nassau to Marsh Harbour on Sunday, defended the Bahamian government against the allegations.

“Haitians have been treated well,” he said. “Some get mad (that) they have been here since yesterday. But the government has first to find a shelter for them.”

“If I have to choose between my mother and my mother-in-law, you know who I have to choose first,” he added.

Thousands of miles north in Canada, Dorian toppled a construction crane at a half-finished building, damaged rooftops and toppled trees after making landfall in the port of Halifax Saturday night.

The Canadian Hurricane Center said the storm caused “serious coastal damage,” as high waves pounded the shoreline.

As of 1821 GMT, Dorian was by the northwest coast of Newfoundland and was expected to soon move off into the Atlantic, it said.

No serious injuries or fatalities have been reported, the Canadian Hurricane Centre said.

More than 500,000 power outages were reported, according to the Canadian Hurricane Centre, which said the problem extended across the Maritimes, a three-province region in eastern Canada comprising Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

Cleanup from Dorian’s effects has begun, the Hurricane Center added.