It’s now been more than a month since Hurricane Dorian finally moved on from the Bahamas. More than a month since things fundamentally changed for the tens of thousands of Bahamians who lived on the islands of Grand Bahama and Great Abaco, not to mention the hundreds of thousands living elsewhere.
The most recent confirmed death toll is 61.
The most recent count of those confirmed missing is 282.
Thousands have fled the islands. Thousands remain. Read the latest sampling of stories from an online search and you’ll hear of buildings flattened, some washed away entirely; bloated corpses pulled from the wreckage, many more likely lost forever to the sea; and the beginnings of reconstruction, with an urgent need to create housing for those thousands that have not left. You’ll hear how it’s suspected that the bodies of dozens of undocumented Haitian immigrants are buried in the rubble of shantytowns. You’ll hear of entire communities decimated, if not destroyed altogether.
Fortunately for the Bahamas as a country, the island of New Providence, where roughly two-thirds of the nation’s 400,000 or so people live in the nation’s capital, Nassau, was relatively spared. It’s become an important hub for relief efforts, and a base to which many of the displaced have fled to stay with friends and family members. But the city’s emergency shelters are crowded. Deportations of those undocumented Haitian immigrants have commenced. As is always the case, the most vulnerable are affected the hardest, both in Nassau and back north on Grand Bahama and Great Abaco.
Those most vulnerable will continue to be affected. Because while the storm moved on, its effects did not. Thousands of individual humans, their hearts and minds and lives of the same depth and importance as yours and mine, are living in unimaginable states of uncertainty, fear, and hardship. Things are being done about this. Relief efforts are there and are evidently making an impact. But there is still so far to go.
