Responding to one disaster, preparing for the next
By Eugene Robinson
The Washington Post
“It is impossible to prepare for an apocalypse,” Dr. Duane Sands, the health minister of the Bahamas, told reporters Sunday.
Somehow, though, we all had better try.
Those who have witnessed the devastation wrought by Hurricane Dorian on Grand Bahama, Great Abaco and Little Abaco islands struggle to describe it. “Some places it’s like nothing happened,” Mark Green, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, told The Washington Post after an aerial tour. “Other places, it’s like they were hit by a nuclear bomb.”
Dorian, then a Category 5 storm bearing sustained winds of 185 miles per hour and gusts even stronger, stalled over the northern Bahamas and barely moved for nearly three full days. The result was the kind of damage more commonly seen from tornados, except that a tornado touchdown typically lasts just minutes. In the town of Marsh Harbour on Great Abaco, entire neighborhoods were smashed into rubble and then the broken pieces were blown around like confetti. Journalists who have reached those places say the smell of death is everywhere.
The official toll stood at just 45 on Monday, but authorities have understandably prioritized the care and feeding of thousands of bereft survivors over the counting of the dead. It is assumed that the final number, or estimate, will be orders of magnitude higher. Sands, who oversees the grim tally, has used the word “staggering” to describe the loss of life.
An exact number of casualties will likely never be known because Dorian’s tsunami-like storm surge carried many victims away. Survivors have told wrenching stories of how they watched helplessly as loved ones were swept out to sea.
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