Nearly half of the homes on Grand Bahama Island and Abaco have been destroyed or severely damaged in Hurricane Dorian and 60,000 people have been left without food and clean drinking water, and officials expect the death toll from the storm to dramatically increase. The most powerful storm ever to hit the Bahamas parked itself over the two islands, thrashing them with winds as high as 185 mph before moving toward Florida on Tuesday night. Aerial footage taken Tuesday showed hospitals, fire and police stations, and the main airport either underwater or destroyed, as British, Canadian, and U.S. military personnel were deployed for the widespread rescue and recovery efforts. “It’s total devastation. It’s decimated. Apocalyptic,” Lia Head-Rigby, a local hurricane worker, told AP. “It’s not rebuilding something that was there; we have to start again.” Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said: “We are in the midst of one of the greatest national crises in our country’s history.” Red Cross spokesman Matthew Cochrane said over 13,000 houses on Grand Bahama and Abaco were severely damaged or destroyed. “What we are hearing lends credence to the fact that this has been a catastrophic storm and a catastrophic impact,” Cochrane said.
