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Around 70,000 people need life-saving assistance and the death toll currently at 30 is expected to climb as the Bahamas Katrina moment hits in the wake of Hurricane Dorians devastation.
The catastrophic Category 5 hurricane barrelled through the island chain of Abaco and Grand Bahama on Sunday (September 1), battering the areas with 185mph winds and torrential rain. What was once a tropical suburbia is now a bombsite.
All the main buildings, gone. Its gone. Everything is gone, said Robert Cornea, who has lived in Abaco for more than 50 years with his wife Phyllis. The couple have been homeless since the weekend.
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As reported by the MailOnline, Phyllis said from the wreckage of her home:
Take a picture of me because its all I have left, what you see me in. Ive been in this four days.
Around 70,000 people are in immediate need of life-saving assistance according to United Nations humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock, who added on Wednesday (September 4) that the most urgent needs are water, food, shelter and accommodation.
Bahamian Health Minister Duane Sands said:
This is our Katrina moment.
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As the death toll rose to 30, Sands added the official count could be staggering. Officials are reportedly sending morticians and 200 body bags to the Abaco Islands, the worst-hit part of the archipelago.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people are still missing.
Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said they expect the number to continue to rise, and that Dorian has left the Bahamas with generational devastation – the hurricane is now hitting the coasts of South and North Carolina in the US, but is weakening.
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As reported by BBC News, Minnis told local radio:
The public needs to prepare for unimaginable information about the death toll and the human suffering.
According to an estimate of the scale of the catastrophe by Karen Clark & Co, the hurricane has racked up $7 billion in insured and uninsured property losses. The International Red Cross posit that 45 per cent of homes on Grand Bahama and the Abacos – around 13,000 properties – were severelyRead More – Source
