The Tribune

By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

ts-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

ABACO residents, still grappling with life after Hurricane Dorian, feel the island is in no way ready for the start of hurricane season next month and fear the worst is to come.

In a recent report, the International Organization for Migration said Abaco is not prepared for the 2020 hurricane season in terms of adequate shelters. The report noted that many shelters are still damaged from Dorian and that more people in Abaco will be more likely to seek refuge in official shelters because of the destruction of homes during the monster storm.

Abaco resident Gaylord Taylor shares a similar view.

“In Abaco most persons are still without reliable shelter, running water or electricity,” Mr Taylor said, painting the grim reality. “Since the lockdown of the island due to the virus outbreak, labour has been affected and places that might have had repairs done didn’t get fixed and most of the NGOs who were a subsidised labour force have left. It’s a bleak outlook should the island be threatened with an early season storm or a strong end of season one as well.”

Mr Taylor said a lot of Abaconians are in fact still living in tents since the island was devastated by Hurricane Dorian which landed on Abaco September 1 with winds of up to 220mph.

“With limited availability of jobs most persons rely heavily on handouts and part-time work that lends to a feeling of desperation,” Mr Taylor continued. “If you ride around Marsh Harbour and see the amount of destruction still visible even eight months later it’s depressing.

“Most construction companies have been hampered by lack of skilled craftsmen with some of their workforce stuck in Nassau due to travel restrictions. Persons are sheltering in abandoned buildings as the owners of those buildings have not returned to the island as yet. People are taking advantage of this for shelter.”

Mr Taylor said there is also a lack of adequate healthcare with the departure of the medical NGOs due to COVID-19 transmission fears.

The IOM report gave several recommendations to reduce disaster risk for the 2020 hurricane season. The report said instead of preparing for the new hurricane season, the focus is still recovering from Dorian. The report admonishes the government to prioritise the full repair of Central Abaco Primary School, adding the capacity of 1,200 people.

“I am very disappointed with the slow movement of this government when it comes to fixing Abaco,” said Antoinette Fox, another resident of Abaco. “Now there is the excuse of the coronavirus lockdown so everything is at a standstill. We have a little over a month for another hurricane season to start and we have very little to show to say we are in full recovery mode. In some areas we look like an atomic bomb was dropped. This is not the Abaco I know. The experience alone of seeing people die in the front of you and fly through the air like missiles was devastating enough.”

Ms Fox said she spends most of her time in Nassau as she cannot bear to look at what used to be her family home. When in Abaco she lives in a small part of the house that is still habitable.

“If a storm of that magnitude was to hit Abaco now, there would be no coming back from it based on our current state,” Ms Fox said. “We would not survive it. World meteorologists are predicting that the 2020 hurricane season is going to be very active. That’s not good news for us. Abaco is in a vulnerable state right now and we can only hope and pray that God has mercy on us and we are passed by this time.”

About 45 percent of the homes on Abaco were severely damaged or destroyed and 60 people on the island died from the Category Five storm.