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In the Bahamas, thousands of people on the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama, hit hard by Hurricane Dorian, are trying to flee. On the tarmac at the airport or at the ferry boarding points, it's the hustle and bustle. It's been a week now since Dorian devastated the area where relief is organized but still struggling to reach the affected areas. Reportage.
From our special correspondent in Nassau , Domitille Piron
Help is not lacking. Already millions of dollars in donations have been pledged to the Bahamas and relief kits, tarpaulins, food and bottled water are ready to be sent, but access to the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama remains very complicated. How to access these disaster areas and send help? This is the main blockage that many NGOs face.
Losing everything you have
Aid is struggling to reach the 70,000 people who need it,
and who have been living for more than a week in water and humidity, without electricity, among the rubble and probably among hundreds of deaths. Body bags were sent by hundreds to Abaco where the government fears a " dizzying " record.
The Bahamas is facing a humanitarian crisis . The press now speaks of more than 200 dead on the archipelago, that the authorities, for lack of resources struggling to count but especially to embalm. And the health minister of the Bahamas warns: one must prepare for a record and unimaginable human suffering.
Thousands are trying to flee Abaco and Grand Bahama by the airport and by the sea. Already this Saturday, 1400 people were repatriated to Florida, and Bahamian security forces evacuated 600 people to the island. from New Providence. Those survivors who have relatives or relatives in the hurricane-free areas, join them with joy and relief. Those who have lost everything and have no one to help them, and they are the most numerous, are in great psychological distress.
This is the case Eric Russell, evacuated to the capital Nassau Saturday morning, after a week of horror. He lost everything. " My house, my car, my business, everything," he says, " in a few hours, between 11 pm and 2 am everything is gone, as if they had thrown a nuclear bomb and eradicated everything. It looks like that, all the trees, all the buildings, fell, we had water up to the neck. These are things you only see in movies! "
"Playing with a lion"
" It's as if we had to play with a cat so far, we played with a lion ". This is how the survivors of Abaco describe Hurricane Dorian.
" It was very hot this year in the Bahamas, so we were prepared but we did not think it would be so catastrophic. We should have been better prepared, evacuated and taken security measures, so we would not have seen so many deaths, "laments Anton Oliver, evacuated among the first, shocked by the force of wind and water.
" It was awful, it lasted at least two and a half days, I had my three children with me and my granddaughter, who is a premature baby, tells us Catherine, another survivor of Abaco. And when I came out, I do not know, it was indescribable. There was nothing left. Nothing , she describes. There is almost no house, there is almost no life in Abaco. We lost almost everything, schools, banks, the airport, there was no communication. We were totally separated from life and its nature as it was. "
" So, for the moment we are here in Nassau, on the island of New Providence. We will have to see what we can do, how we rebuild Abaco, we will have to reveal ourselves but for now we have to wait because there is still a lot of water, things everywhere, and a lot of bodies . "