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Bahamians board a bus to a visitor center after being forced off a ferry to Florida on September 9, 2019. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP

The latest death toll is 45, but Hurricane Dorian appears to have taken a significant toll. And he devastated the two islands the most northern of the archipelago and the most populated. Clearing operations are just beginning and as evacuations continue, the crisis seems to be moving to another level.

With our special correspondent in Nassau, Domitille Piron

It is a migration crisis looming. " Exodus " title also the national press. Thousands of people have already been evacuated from the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama. They were 3,500 Monday night to have arrived in the capital, but one expects to receive double , even triple.

On the spot, the survivors of Hurricane Dorian are still waiting to leave these islands of which there is almost nothing left . An inhabitant of Marsh Arbor on Abaco estimates that 80% of his city was ravaged by the hurricane. Escaping remains the only option.

" I want to leave the Bahamas because I am too upset, I want a new life and I do not want this new life in the Bahamas," says Timoty Rode, evacuee of Abaco. Nassau is not a new life for me, I would like to go to the United States or Canada. I see only one possibility is to leave here! I am so shocked by what I have experienced, if I see another hurricane, fear will kill me. "

Immigration services overwhelmed

And if so far the United States has helped evacuate and even welcomed about 1,500 survivors in Florida, now the doors seem to be closing. In Freeport, Grand Bahama, hundreds of people were forced to get off the ferry to Miami for lack of a visa.

Donald Trump also said Monday that the United States should " pay attention " to people from the Bahamas hosted on US territory, warning against " members of gangs and very bad traffickers ."

In the capital, Nassau, the evacuees are just waiting to leave, the immigration services are overwhelmed. According to an immigration officer, the Bahamas government is swimming in chaos and the crisis the country is facing is unprecedented.

I want to go back to Abaco, even if it was destroyed. I want to go back to Abaco at home. But they say another hurricane is coming, so my mom said we could not go back because there would be another hurricane.

Children, survivors of Abaco, remember the passage of Dorian

Report in a gym in Nassau

10/09/2019 - by Domitille Piron Play