First a direct hit from a Category 5 hurricane, then a global pandemic
By
Adriana Navarro, AccuWeather staff writer
A year has passed since the Bahamas were devastated by Hurricane Dorian. Now, recovery efforts continue under the shadow of a global pandemic. AccuWeather spoke with Abaconians about the last year, and their road forward.
The residents who weathered the 185-mph winds and the destruction that followed Hurricane Dorian last year were just getting back on their feet when a storm of another kind hit – and it hasn’t let up. Since the coronavirus pandemic began, recovery has slowed down at Abaco, Bahamian residents have told AccuWeather.
A year after the Category 5 Hurricane Dorian slammed into the tiny island, some Abaconians still reside in tents as they rebuild. Others have found themselves with a solid house but still no electricity despite progress being made with the electric grid.
Communities have often faced years of recovery efforts after a hurricane strike, especially when crucial infrastructure is damaged. Puerto Ricans are still recovering two years after Maria, and even portions of New Orleans have yet to recover after Hurricane Katrina 15 years later. But now, COVID-19 has created a new set of barriers for recovering hurricane-stricken communities.
A satellite image showing the well-defined eye of Hurricane Dorian moving over Marsh Harbour on Abaco Island on Sept. 1, 2019. At that point, the storm was a Category 5 hurricane with 185-mph sustained winds. (NOAA / AccuWeather)
The virus has hit every aspect of life on the island.
Coronavirus lockdowns and curfews may mean retiring to a tent for the weekend for those who have yet to rebuild their homes. Food distribution centers, which had seen a drop in households registered to receive aid in the form of food after Dorian, witnessed a spike in Abaconians once again needing help with groceries upon the arrival of the virus. Businesses that had buckled under Dorian or were on the road to recovery faced a new hurdle, and the threat of virus transmission barred any chance of economic recovery through tourism over the winter.
Mixed feelings arose over how the Bahamian federal government handled recovery from Dorian, which in turn fed into the response to the coronavirus. Some stayed focused on the positives and any progress being made, as they explained mistakes were bound to occur due to human nature. Others expressed frustration over not just a slow recovery process, but a feeling of abandonment from the government, which intensified after COVID-19 drew federal attention elsewhere.
"Before COVID, people in Abaco felt like the government was neglecting their needs. They really were, in every way, neglecting. And then when COVID happened, they just forgot about Abaco," said entrepreneur Carl Carter, one of the many Bahamians who spoke with AccuWeather over the course of September and October about their hopes and frustrations in recovery efforts.
Comparison satellite images showing Marsh Harbour, Abaco Island, Bahamas before, after and one year after Hurricane Dorian, centered on "The Mudd" shantytown, which was not rebuilt after the hurricane. (Satellite images ©2020 Maxar Technologies)
About the storm
As Dorian steered toward the Bahamas in 2019, the hurricane strengthened into a Category 3 hurricane, gaining major hurricane status, around 2 p.m. local time on Aug. 30. By the following day, it was a Category 4 storm with winds around 133 mph.
On Sept. 1, less than 48 hours after becoming a major hurricane, Dorian had exploded into a Category 5 monster with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph. A hurricane reaches Category 5 status, the highest hurricane category on the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale, when sustained wind speeds hit 157 mph.
The strongest Atlantic hurricane in recorded history was Hurricane Allen in 1980, which reached maximum sustained wind speeds of 190 mph. Dorian was just 5 mph under Allen's strength.
"You blinked your eyes and it was a Category 5," Barbara Bethel of Marsh Harbour told AccuWeather in an interview over Zoom. She, her daughter, her son-in-law, her mother, and infant granddaughter all weathered and survived the hurricane in Marsh Harbour.
Hurricane Dorian slammed into Elbow Cay, Bahamas, at peak intensity, becoming the strongest hurricane in modern history to make landfall in the island nation. Then, the storm practically parked itself over Abaco and battered the small island for hours with "its greatest fury," as the official National Hurricane Center report on Dorian put it.
While his family had sought refuge back at Nassau, Carter had remained in Treasure Cay as Dorian barreled toward the island of Abaco on Sept. 1, 2019.
Farther south in Marsh Harbor, Bethel was looking out the window when her daughter's boyfriend came to pull her out of the house. The water had started to rise and the wind had started tearing their home apart.
Around the same time, Don Wood, also of Marsh Harbour, grabbed his bag with all of his paperwork and some money. He would choose to let go of it only a few moments later in favor of picking up one of his three dogs in an attempt to save her from the storm as he tried to climb onto a roof to escape the rising storm surge. He watched the bag with about $1,000 and his U.S. passport float off.
At what would be ground zero in Elbow Cay, Jessica Mullen took shelter with her partner. They survived the catastrophe, and all have stories to tell of how that one day has impacted their lives more than a year later.
How Dorian recovery efforts layer with COVID-19 in daily life
These days, a trip to Marsh Harbour's only reopened large-scale grocery store for Hill will likely take hours. Parking is difficult, and lines have become longer -- not just from any remaining COVID-19 restrictions, but due to building codes allowing only so many people at once into the store after Dorian.
The store's supplies quickly sell out, she noted. A few mini marks with basic supplies have since reopened, but worries over having to rely on the stores have prompted some people to start finding other ways to provide food for themselves.
"Most of us have started backyard farming and have chickens and other stuff because you don't know if the grocery is going to have enough for that week," Hill said. "Supplies come in and out very quickly, and then you also don't want to rely on that one, because it's always in the back of your mind: What if? What if ...?"
While Nassau had kicked off the largest food distribution effort in the country's history in July as a result of the pandemic, Abaco had been distributing food since shortly after the hurricane.
"Our 'new normal' started Sept. 1 -- not when COVID started," Hill told AccuWeather.
Elbow Cay resident Lydia Ruth Hill on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Dorian. (Lydia Ruth Hill)
(Image/Lydia Ruth Hill)
Hill has played a role in food distribution from the start, founding Abaco Hands and Feet in her brother's backyard five days after Dorian and distributing food under New Vision Ministries. For eight months she continued her efforts and saw the number of centers on the island dwindle to about six. However, when the pandemic hit, the number increased to around 20 across Abaco including the six main outer cays -- or the smaller islands off of Abaco's eastern coast.
Within two weeks of the prime minister closing borders, setting curfews and closing nonessential businesses, Hill said she saw distribution lines double.
This image shows a serving of meals around the first week after Dorian, consisting of fish that Abaconians caught and vegetables from various persons' pantries. The plastic trays had been found at the church. (ILydia Ruth Hill)
(Photo/Lydia Ruth Hill)
As of October 2020, more than a year after the Category 5 hurricane hit, the IDEA Relief food distribution program that Hill had joined had more than 3,000 people registered. Hill estimated that about 60% of the registrants qualified for delivery as seniors, a single parent or as someone with a disability, and she added that COVID-19 boosted the percentage of deliveries per week to about 70%.
Households receiving the groceries ranged from people living in tents to pods to trailers to homes, Hill told AccuWeather. Even people who still had houses had found themselves stretched to afford food as mortgages kicked back in or if they had to funnel money into fixing any means of transportation that had been wrecked by Dorian.
After Dorian destroyed the homes of many, dome tents were set up for people to live in while they rebuilt. (Image/Lydia Ruth Hill)
Wood, a local sculptor in Marsh Harbour, is one of the thousands of people on Abaco still receiving groceries from IDEA Relief after Dorian. Every week Wood dons his mask and makes the trip into town to the fire department to pick up the selected tuna, corn beef, rice, or grits -- the same menu he's been eating for about a year now.
"I've got grits piled up here," Wood said.
He doesn't venture far into town, the memory of the hurricane still heavy. Dorian took Wood's home as well as his art studio, his United States passport, his glasses as well as one of his three dogs, Sterling Silver. And like many others, Wood lost loved ones in the storm.
After buying a plot of land about 25 miles outside of town, Wood built a small one-bedroom home near the beach. Nearby is a nature trail where he and his dogs, Rooster and Queenie, go for walks every day.
Dorian recovery efforts and COVID-19 travel restrictions
Far enough outside of town, Wood seems nearly isolated from the pandemic, but the restrictions put in place due to the pandemic have hampered his attempts to return to the capital city of Nassau to replace his passport and glasses.
Since June, there have been several restrictions on traveling between the islands of the Bahamas due to the coronavirus. Despite the proximity of Abaco to New Providence, where Nassau is located -- about 88 miles to the south -- Wood doesn't believe he'll be able to make it to the city at least until Christmastime or until the pandemic wanes.
Permanent resident Don Wood is still rebuilding after Hurricane Dorian. Although his home is finished, he has started constructing a new art studio. (Don Wood)
Although Wood is a U.S. Coast Guard veteran who lives in Abaco as a permanent resident, he can't reenter the U.S. without a passport. He had attempted to replace his passport before the pandemic hit, but noted that the U.S. Embassy has offered "no help."
As for his glasses, Wood has been using one of his old pairs with an old prescription that was found where his house once stood until he can find a new pair with his current prescription.
Another inhibiting factor is that Nassau experienced a recent spike in coronavirus cases, and cases in Abaco have slowly been on the rise. As a result, both islands mandated lockdowns over the weekends, which started Oct. 9 and will continue until further notice. Curfews in Abaco also tightened from a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. time frame to 7 p.m. to 5 a.m.
To date, the Bahamas has recorded nearly 7,000 cases of the coronavirus and more than 150 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Knowing that the cases have escalated in Nassau, Wood noted that he didn't want to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. So for now, he stays at home, continuing to build a new art studio and working on models for a Dorian memorial.
Don Wood's small-scale model of a memorial for the victims of Hurricane Dorian. (Don Wood)
Tightening travel restrictions from COVID also inhibited residents like Carter from traveling between visiting his family in Nassau and running his business in Treasure Cay, Abaco.
Before Dorian, Carter's family had recently moved to Abaco, an island that had been "like a second home" to them. They put their house in Nassau on the market, and Carter started a business in boat chartering, ferrying people out on tours, fishing excursions and island-hopping adventures.
Abaconian businesses facing not just Dorian impacts, but COVID-19 restrictions
As the hurricane approached the island, however, the family retreated to the unsold home in Nassau while Carter stayed behind on Abaco. During the storm, both the boathouse he had taken shelter in and his boat that was the cornerstone of his business were wrecked.
"Everyone had something removed from them, and for me, personally, it was a means of making money," Carter said.
Although his boat had been damaged by Dorian, Carter was able to start up a heavy equipment business, Abaco Trucks and Trailers, in which he operates and contracts machines as the island works toward recovery. His family has stayed in the capital since the storm, and Carter had been jumping between the two islands as he traveled for work and to visit family.
When COVID-19 hit, though, travel restrictions between islands slowed his progress. Toward the beginning, he had even gotten stuck in Nassau 10 days before he was supposed to leave for Abaco for rebuilding efforts.
He remained in Nassau until restrictions eased enough for him to travel. For the past four months, however, Carter has lived in a tent in Abaco as his boathouse is rebuilt. He estimates it should be turn-key ready for him to live in during his stays at Abaco within weeks.
Carl Carter, an entrepreneur, had property damaged during Hurricane Dorian and lost his means of making a living to the hurricane before he founded Abaco Trucks and Trailers. (Image/Carl Carter)
As for the time frame for the rebuilding of the island, Carter estimates it could take five to seven years before Abaco has proper infrastructure again, and it could take years before the island recovers to its economic height pre-Dorian. In an estimation on a percentage of where Abaco was at in recovery, Carter placed it at a "generous" 60%, primarily due to the progress on infrastructure.
Carter attributes some of the lag in progress to COVID-19, saying that there have been situations where materials needed for rebuilding efforts are flown out on schedule, but that there's a "bottleneck" on their distribution due to heavy demand. He noted that the coronavirus also hasn't helped with those efforts, and that the delay in the arrival of materials has even halted construction to a certain point due to crews not having what they needed to continue.
As for the economics of the island, the small businesses that survived Dorian quickly found themselves facing a new challenge with the COVID-19 lockdowns.
"I'd say about the time COVID came around, I'd say every one who had a certain small business dealing with food, dealing with anything outside of construction, they were just starting to get a momentum going," Carter said. "And then when lockdowns and restrictions came into play, you know, that just took that off the table."
Since the first lockdowns, Carter's own business in heavy equipment has not been deeply affected by the virus as construction work was still allowed.
Even with the very first national lockdown, Carter said, exemptions were made for construction. "With my heavy equipment, that falls into that category because I service contractors. I service anything that deals with construction."
After the first weekend-long lockdown of Abaco during October, Carter updated AccuWeather that construction had not been allowed.
The double-edged sword of tourism in the midst of a pandemic
COVID-19 had also dashed any hope of a quick economic recovery through tourism.
Abaconians have expressed mixed feelings to AccuWeather about tourism during the pandemic. For Carter, tourism seems like the best way for private individuals outside of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to help the island rebuild economically, despite the COVID-19 restrictions.
"Visiting. That's the best way to help. Straight up," he said. "That's our main economic driver throughout the entire Bahamas. Can't go wrong, just visit us out of help. That's it."
The Bahamas, like most of the rest of the world, is currently considered a high-risk area for COVID-19 by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, the islands were reopened to international tourists since July 1 with specific guidelines in place. Those guidelines have since been updated as of Oct. 31.
Carter noted that while the COVID-19 measures in place were a pain, they were in place to protect both visitors and residents. He added that those who own second homes there still come to visit the island even through the pandemic, and they quarantine in their homes for the appropriate amount of time.
An image from The Bahamas website, which promotes tourism across the islands. (The Islands of the Bahamas)
The sentiment of continuing with tourism after the hurricane was present before COVID-19 hit, as tourism amounts to about half of The Bahamas' Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to The Bahamas Investment Authority. After reaching roughly 554,000 tourist arrivals in August 2019, that number dropped sharply by roughly 60% in September after Dorian.
The number of tourist arrivals steadily rebounded into the following January, and even February, before dropping from over 700,000 to just over 300,000 in March. By April, the number had dwindled to 43,000, continuing to drop until slightly rebounding in July to about 23,400 tourist arrivals.
Mullen, who had ridden Dorian out where it had made landfall in Elbow Cay, told AccuWeather that Abaco had been greyed out on the government website's tourism map after Dorian's landfall, bringing up bitter feelings, shared on social media, for some residents.
"'You're too much of a problem. We're just going to get rid of that,'" Mullen told AccuWeather, expressing the message she felt the decision to exclude Abaco from the map had delivered to the islanders.
On the official Instagram page of the Bahamas, a post on Sept. 9, 2019, shows all of the islands, except for the Abacos and Freeport, the two islands hit by Dorian, highlighted.
A map of The Bahamas from the country's official Instagram account on Sept. 9, 2019, advertising tourism. Freeport and Abaco, the two islands hit by Hurricane Dorian were not highlighted, nor was Ragged Island. (Instagram/@visitthebahamas)
(Instagram/@visitthebahamas)
While this was still around the time of cleanup for the islands, Mullen noted that the move had still hurt.
A dual resident of the Bahamas and Canada, Mullen expressed to AccuWeather her fears of mixing COVID-19 with tourism and the economic recovery of the island. She had traveled to live with family in Canada after the hurricane, and said that she didn't want to take up resources needed by others recovering from the storm who couldn't get out. From more than 1,000 miles away from Abaco, she still advocates for change from a distance and aims to draw attention to the "lack of help and assistance that continues now, one year later."
With COVID factoring into the tourism industry, Mullen expressed concern about tourists who weren't second homeowners traveling to the islands affected by Dorian for the safety of the residents of the island, especially since some residents quarantine in tents.
"[The government] is still kind of putting all their eggs in this tourism basket and trying to bend the rules of COVID and what not, to keep that tourism going because that's their only generator," Mullen said. "And I understand that. And that's the biggest, you know, gem that we have to sell. But at this point, we've got to figure out how to do it safely and sustainably."
Jessica Mullen, a dual resident of The Bahamas and Canada, rode out Dorian in Elbow Cay, where the hurricane made landfall. (Image/Jessica Mullen)
The reaction of the non-governmental organizations
The tightening of travel with the pandemic has not only affected the economic recovery, but also the physical recovery as the NGOs and second homeowners were impacted by the original lockdowns. In the face of the pandemic, a majority of the NGOs had to leave the islands for the health of their own employees and volunteers.
A repeated sentiment among the people who spoke with AccuWeather was a resounding gratitude toward both NGOs and second homeowners, despite some of their stays lasting for just months, and many of the Abaco residents who AccuWeather spoke with attributed a large amount of progress to the NGOs.
"They gave people in the community the hope to know that, you know what, we may be battered, we may be bruised, but people out there know what's going on. We're not alone," Carter said. After the storm's battering, he added, "It felt like we were cut off from the world, literally."
The island had limited telecommunications after Dorian. The WiFi was down in some areas, and Dorian had damaged a large portion of the power grid and water lines.
"It felt like, that's it. No one, no one will remember that we're here on this little island, you know," Carter said. But when NGOs started coming in, followed by second homeowners bringing supplies to the people on the island who they knew, spirits rebounded.
"That gave everybody the kind of confidence to be like, 'Alright, we can make it another day. We can go another week. We can go another month,'" Carter remarked. "Without that, people would have been willing to move. Honestly, even hard-bred Abaconians who generations of [their] family have lived here. A lot of them were considering [the possibility that] 'I'm moving,' you know. So it meant a lot to see stuff like that happen, in my opinion."
Hill expressed similar sentiments.
"We felt very disconnected from the world," Hill said, noting that COVID-19 had made the islanders go back to a feeling of disconnection that Dorian had initially brought before the NGOs had arrived.
NGOs began to remove most of their people from the island as the reach of the coronavirus grew -- a move that many of the residents of Abaco who spoke with AccuWeather said was a good move for the safety of those who had helped them.
Garnell Stuart, a resident of Marsh Harbour, explained to AccuWeather that although many of the NGOs had left due to COVID-19, they had also "trained-out" some locals before leaving.
Garnell Stuart was a music teacher before Hurricane Dorian and has played a role in recovery efforts after the storm. (Garnell Stuart/IMAGES by Alexander/ www.ibabahamas.com)
Her cousin, who had worked for Water Mission, had been trained to continue keeping one of the NGO's programs functioning, Stuart said, acting as one of a handful of individuals operating from the base on behalf of the NGO.
"They may have just one or two key individuals on base in Abaco who are helping out," Stuart explained, adding that the small numbers of NGO members left are partly because the "disaster mode" phase has passed "and their incentives aren't to take over. Their incentives are just to get the ball going."
However, the absence of help from NGOs was still noticeable. World Central Kitchen had previously played a role in distributing food from Marsh Harbour to northern Abaco. The organization's volunteers made the hour-and-a-half to two-hour drive daily on an island, where gasoline and propane were valuable commodities for months after the storm. With their access to transportation, they were able to distribute food from Treasure Key, to Blackwood to Cooperstown to the community of Crown Haven on the most northwestern part of the island to deliver food to community center dropoffs.
Again, many of the Abaconians expressed gratitude toward NGOs, including World Central Kitchen as well as an understanding of the scenario with the coronavirus in play. However, the beginning of their absence was like a rug being pulled out from under some people.
"When that stopped, you had a lot of people who were already dependent on the daily delivery from World Central Kitchen like, 'Whoa, this isn't happening anymore,'" Carter said.
In the next several weeks, people started reaching out to help others and sharing what they had in their stock and pantries. One volunteer unaffiliated with any organization came through for North Abaco, Carter said, independently seeking funding and networking and setting up a system where a food truck from a supermarket would deliver groceries to a town, and some of the food was even flown in on a daily basis.
The volunteer stepping up was enough to carry north Abaco for months until the communities could connect with IDEA Relief.
"I'm telling you, she [the volunteer] is an honorary Abaconian, Bahamian citizen. I mean, literally, she did quite a bit," Carter said, adding, "COVID-19 has been a thorn in everyone's side, just to say the least."
That thorn that has also cut into recovery efforts from Dorian, affecting the lives of Abaconians even a year later.
But although a majority of the islanders AccuWeather spoke with expressed frustration with a slow response time from the federal government while facing the two disasters, many also expressed a hope and determination to pull through stronger than before.
"Adversity is a part of life," Carter said. "It's just the amount of adversity one goes through that separates what a person can handle from what another person cannot handle emotionally."
Carter added that from adversity and strife, "You become victorious in some ways," and people have hope that in the end things will be better than they were before. He expanded on the sentiment, saying it's like looking at something brand new, and looking at it through that lens.
"But emotionally," he said, "it's a toll."
Additional reporting by Mark Puleo.
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First a direct hit from a Category 5 hurricane, then a global pandemic
By Adriana Navarro, AccuWeather staff writer
A year has passed since the Bahamas were devastated by Hurricane Dorian. Now, recovery efforts continue under the shadow of a global pandemic. AccuWeather spoke with Abaconians about the last year, and their road forward.
The residents who weathered the 185-mph winds and the destruction that followed Hurricane Dorian last year were just getting back on their feet when a storm of another kind hit – and it hasn’t let up. Since the coronavirus pandemic began, recovery has slowed down at Abaco, Bahamian residents have told AccuWeather.
A year after the Category 5 Hurricane Dorian slammed into the tiny island, some Abaconians still reside in tents as they rebuild. Others have found themselves with a solid house but still no electricity despite progress being made with the electric grid.
Communities have often faced years of recovery efforts after a hurricane strike, especially when crucial infrastructure is damaged. Puerto Ricans are still recovering two years after Maria, and even portions of New Orleans have yet to recover after Hurricane Katrina 15 years later. But now, COVID-19 has created a new set of barriers for recovering hurricane-stricken communities.
A satellite image showing the well-defined eye of Hurricane Dorian moving over Marsh Harbour on Abaco Island on Sept. 1, 2019. At that point, the storm was a Category 5 hurricane with 185-mph sustained winds. (NOAA / AccuWeather)
The virus has hit every aspect of life on the island.
Coronavirus lockdowns and curfews may mean retiring to a tent for the weekend for those who have yet to rebuild their homes. Food distribution centers, which had seen a drop in households registered to receive aid in the form of food after Dorian, witnessed a spike in Abaconians once again needing help with groceries upon the arrival of the virus. Businesses that had buckled under Dorian or were on the road to recovery faced a new hurdle, and the threat of virus transmission barred any chance of economic recovery through tourism over the winter.
Mixed feelings arose over how the Bahamian federal government handled recovery from Dorian, which in turn fed into the response to the coronavirus. Some stayed focused on the positives and any progress being made, as they explained mistakes were bound to occur due to human nature. Others expressed frustration over not just a slow recovery process, but a feeling of abandonment from the government, which intensified after COVID-19 drew federal attention elsewhere.
"Before COVID, people in Abaco felt like the government was neglecting their needs. They really were, in every way, neglecting. And then when COVID happened, they just forgot about Abaco," said entrepreneur Carl Carter, one of the many Bahamians who spoke with AccuWeather over the course of September and October about their hopes and frustrations in recovery efforts.
Comparison satellite images showing Marsh Harbour, Abaco Island, Bahamas before, after and one year after Hurricane Dorian, centered on "The Mudd" shantytown, which was not rebuilt after the hurricane. (Satellite images ©2020 Maxar Technologies)
About the storm
As Dorian steered toward the Bahamas in 2019, the hurricane strengthened into a Category 3 hurricane, gaining major hurricane status, around 2 p.m. local time on Aug. 30. By the following day, it was a Category 4 storm with winds around 133 mph.
On Sept. 1, less than 48 hours after becoming a major hurricane, Dorian had exploded into a Category 5 monster with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph. A hurricane reaches Category 5 status, the highest hurricane category on the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale, when sustained wind speeds hit 157 mph.
The strongest Atlantic hurricane in recorded history was Hurricane Allen in 1980, which reached maximum sustained wind speeds of 190 mph. Dorian was just 5 mph under Allen's strength.
"You blinked your eyes and it was a Category 5," Barbara Bethel of Marsh Harbour told AccuWeather in an interview over Zoom. She, her daughter, her son-in-law, her mother, and infant granddaughter all weathered and survived the hurricane in Marsh Harbour.
Hurricane Dorian slammed into Elbow Cay, Bahamas, at peak intensity, becoming the strongest hurricane in modern history to make landfall in the island nation. Then, the storm practically parked itself over Abaco and battered the small island for hours with "its greatest fury," as the official National Hurricane Center report on Dorian put it.
While his family had sought refuge back at Nassau, Carter had remained in Treasure Cay as Dorian barreled toward the island of Abaco on Sept. 1, 2019.
Farther south in Marsh Harbor, Bethel was looking out the window when her daughter's boyfriend came to pull her out of the house. The water had started to rise and the wind had started tearing their home apart.
Around the same time, Don Wood, also of Marsh Harbour, grabbed his bag with all of his paperwork and some money. He would choose to let go of it only a few moments later in favor of picking up one of his three dogs in an attempt to save her from the storm as he tried to climb onto a roof to escape the rising storm surge. He watched the bag with about $1,000 and his U.S. passport float off.
At what would be ground zero in Elbow Cay, Jessica Mullen took shelter with her partner. They survived the catastrophe, and all have stories to tell of how that one day has impacted their lives more than a year later.
How Dorian recovery efforts layer with COVID-19 in daily life
These days, a trip to Marsh Harbour's only reopened large-scale grocery store for Hill will likely take hours. Parking is difficult, and lines have become longer -- not just from any remaining COVID-19 restrictions, but due to building codes allowing only so many people at once into the store after Dorian.
The store's supplies quickly sell out, she noted. A few mini marks with basic supplies have since reopened, but worries over having to rely on the stores have prompted some people to start finding other ways to provide food for themselves.
"Most of us have started backyard farming and have chickens and other stuff because you don't know if the grocery is going to have enough for that week," Hill said. "Supplies come in and out very quickly, and then you also don't want to rely on that one, because it's always in the back of your mind: What if? What if ...?"
While Nassau had kicked off the largest food distribution effort in the country's history in July as a result of the pandemic, Abaco had been distributing food since shortly after the hurricane.
"Our 'new normal' started Sept. 1 -- not when COVID started," Hill told AccuWeather.
Elbow Cay resident Lydia Ruth Hill on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Dorian. (Lydia Ruth Hill)
Hill has played a role in food distribution from the start, founding Abaco Hands and Feet in her brother's backyard five days after Dorian and distributing food under New Vision Ministries. For eight months she continued her efforts and saw the number of centers on the island dwindle to about six. However, when the pandemic hit, the number increased to around 20 across Abaco including the six main outer cays -- or the smaller islands off of Abaco's eastern coast.
Within two weeks of the prime minister closing borders, setting curfews and closing nonessential businesses, Hill said she saw distribution lines double.
This image shows a serving of meals around the first week after Dorian, consisting of fish that Abaconians caught and vegetables from various persons' pantries. The plastic trays had been found at the church. (ILydia Ruth Hill)
As of October 2020, more than a year after the Category 5 hurricane hit, the IDEA Relief food distribution program that Hill had joined had more than 3,000 people registered. Hill estimated that about 60% of the registrants qualified for delivery as seniors, a single parent or as someone with a disability, and she added that COVID-19 boosted the percentage of deliveries per week to about 70%.
Households receiving the groceries ranged from people living in tents to pods to trailers to homes, Hill told AccuWeather. Even people who still had houses had found themselves stretched to afford food as mortgages kicked back in or if they had to funnel money into fixing any means of transportation that had been wrecked by Dorian.
After Dorian destroyed the homes of many, dome tents were set up for people to live in while they rebuilt. (Image/Lydia Ruth Hill)
Wood, a local sculptor in Marsh Harbour, is one of the thousands of people on Abaco still receiving groceries from IDEA Relief after Dorian. Every week Wood dons his mask and makes the trip into town to the fire department to pick up the selected tuna, corn beef, rice, or grits -- the same menu he's been eating for about a year now.
"I've got grits piled up here," Wood said.
He doesn't venture far into town, the memory of the hurricane still heavy. Dorian took Wood's home as well as his art studio, his United States passport, his glasses as well as one of his three dogs, Sterling Silver. And like many others, Wood lost loved ones in the storm.
After buying a plot of land about 25 miles outside of town, Wood built a small one-bedroom home near the beach. Nearby is a nature trail where he and his dogs, Rooster and Queenie, go for walks every day.
Dorian recovery efforts and COVID-19 travel restrictions
Far enough outside of town, Wood seems nearly isolated from the pandemic, but the restrictions put in place due to the pandemic have hampered his attempts to return to the capital city of Nassau to replace his passport and glasses.
Since June, there have been several restrictions on traveling between the islands of the Bahamas due to the coronavirus. Despite the proximity of Abaco to New Providence, where Nassau is located -- about 88 miles to the south -- Wood doesn't believe he'll be able to make it to the city at least until Christmastime or until the pandemic wanes.
Permanent resident Don Wood is still rebuilding after Hurricane Dorian. Although his home is finished, he has started constructing a new art studio. (Don Wood)
Although Wood is a U.S. Coast Guard veteran who lives in Abaco as a permanent resident, he can't reenter the U.S. without a passport. He had attempted to replace his passport before the pandemic hit, but noted that the U.S. Embassy has offered "no help."
As for his glasses, Wood has been using one of his old pairs with an old prescription that was found where his house once stood until he can find a new pair with his current prescription.
Another inhibiting factor is that Nassau experienced a recent spike in coronavirus cases, and cases in Abaco have slowly been on the rise. As a result, both islands mandated lockdowns over the weekends, which started Oct. 9 and will continue until further notice. Curfews in Abaco also tightened from a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. time frame to 7 p.m. to 5 a.m.
To date, the Bahamas has recorded nearly 7,000 cases of the coronavirus and more than 150 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Knowing that the cases have escalated in Nassau, Wood noted that he didn't want to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. So for now, he stays at home, continuing to build a new art studio and working on models for a Dorian memorial.
Don Wood's small-scale model of a memorial for the victims of Hurricane Dorian. (Don Wood)
Tightening travel restrictions from COVID also inhibited residents like Carter from traveling between visiting his family in Nassau and running his business in Treasure Cay, Abaco.
Before Dorian, Carter's family had recently moved to Abaco, an island that had been "like a second home" to them. They put their house in Nassau on the market, and Carter started a business in boat chartering, ferrying people out on tours, fishing excursions and island-hopping adventures.
Abaconian businesses facing not just Dorian impacts, but COVID-19 restrictions
As the hurricane approached the island, however, the family retreated to the unsold home in Nassau while Carter stayed behind on Abaco. During the storm, both the boathouse he had taken shelter in and his boat that was the cornerstone of his business were wrecked.
"Everyone had something removed from them, and for me, personally, it was a means of making money," Carter said.
Although his boat had been damaged by Dorian, Carter was able to start up a heavy equipment business, Abaco Trucks and Trailers, in which he operates and contracts machines as the island works toward recovery. His family has stayed in the capital since the storm, and Carter had been jumping between the two islands as he traveled for work and to visit family.
When COVID-19 hit, though, travel restrictions between islands slowed his progress. Toward the beginning, he had even gotten stuck in Nassau 10 days before he was supposed to leave for Abaco for rebuilding efforts.
He remained in Nassau until restrictions eased enough for him to travel. For the past four months, however, Carter has lived in a tent in Abaco as his boathouse is rebuilt. He estimates it should be turn-key ready for him to live in during his stays at Abaco within weeks.
Carl Carter, an entrepreneur, had property damaged during Hurricane Dorian and lost his means of making a living to the hurricane before he founded Abaco Trucks and Trailers. (Image/Carl Carter)
As for the time frame for the rebuilding of the island, Carter estimates it could take five to seven years before Abaco has proper infrastructure again, and it could take years before the island recovers to its economic height pre-Dorian. In an estimation on a percentage of where Abaco was at in recovery, Carter placed it at a "generous" 60%, primarily due to the progress on infrastructure.
Carter attributes some of the lag in progress to COVID-19, saying that there have been situations where materials needed for rebuilding efforts are flown out on schedule, but that there's a "bottleneck" on their distribution due to heavy demand. He noted that the coronavirus also hasn't helped with those efforts, and that the delay in the arrival of materials has even halted construction to a certain point due to crews not having what they needed to continue.
As for the economics of the island, the small businesses that survived Dorian quickly found themselves facing a new challenge with the COVID-19 lockdowns.
"I'd say about the time COVID came around, I'd say every one who had a certain small business dealing with food, dealing with anything outside of construction, they were just starting to get a momentum going," Carter said. "And then when lockdowns and restrictions came into play, you know, that just took that off the table."
Since the first lockdowns, Carter's own business in heavy equipment has not been deeply affected by the virus as construction work was still allowed.
Even with the very first national lockdown, Carter said, exemptions were made for construction. "With my heavy equipment, that falls into that category because I service contractors. I service anything that deals with construction."
After the first weekend-long lockdown of Abaco during October, Carter updated AccuWeather that construction had not been allowed.
The double-edged sword of tourism in the midst of a pandemic
COVID-19 had also dashed any hope of a quick economic recovery through tourism.
Abaconians have expressed mixed feelings to AccuWeather about tourism during the pandemic. For Carter, tourism seems like the best way for private individuals outside of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to help the island rebuild economically, despite the COVID-19 restrictions.
"Visiting. That's the best way to help. Straight up," he said. "That's our main economic driver throughout the entire Bahamas. Can't go wrong, just visit us out of help. That's it."
The Bahamas, like most of the rest of the world, is currently considered a high-risk area for COVID-19 by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, the islands were reopened to international tourists since July 1 with specific guidelines in place. Those guidelines have since been updated as of Oct. 31.
Carter noted that while the COVID-19 measures in place were a pain, they were in place to protect both visitors and residents. He added that those who own second homes there still come to visit the island even through the pandemic, and they quarantine in their homes for the appropriate amount of time.
An image from The Bahamas website, which promotes tourism across the islands. (The Islands of the Bahamas)
The sentiment of continuing with tourism after the hurricane was present before COVID-19 hit, as tourism amounts to about half of The Bahamas' Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to The Bahamas Investment Authority. After reaching roughly 554,000 tourist arrivals in August 2019, that number dropped sharply by roughly 60% in September after Dorian.
The number of tourist arrivals steadily rebounded into the following January, and even February, before dropping from over 700,000 to just over 300,000 in March. By April, the number had dwindled to 43,000, continuing to drop until slightly rebounding in July to about 23,400 tourist arrivals.
Mullen, who had ridden Dorian out where it had made landfall in Elbow Cay, told AccuWeather that Abaco had been greyed out on the government website's tourism map after Dorian's landfall, bringing up bitter feelings, shared on social media, for some residents.
"'You're too much of a problem. We're just going to get rid of that,'" Mullen told AccuWeather, expressing the message she felt the decision to exclude Abaco from the map had delivered to the islanders.
On the official Instagram page of the Bahamas, a post on Sept. 9, 2019, shows all of the islands, except for the Abacos and Freeport, the two islands hit by Dorian, highlighted.
A map of The Bahamas from the country's official Instagram account on Sept. 9, 2019, advertising tourism. Freeport and Abaco, the two islands hit by Hurricane Dorian were not highlighted, nor was Ragged Island. (Instagram/@visitthebahamas)
While this was still around the time of cleanup for the islands, Mullen noted that the move had still hurt.
A dual resident of the Bahamas and Canada, Mullen expressed to AccuWeather her fears of mixing COVID-19 with tourism and the economic recovery of the island. She had traveled to live with family in Canada after the hurricane, and said that she didn't want to take up resources needed by others recovering from the storm who couldn't get out. From more than 1,000 miles away from Abaco, she still advocates for change from a distance and aims to draw attention to the "lack of help and assistance that continues now, one year later."
With COVID factoring into the tourism industry, Mullen expressed concern about tourists who weren't second homeowners traveling to the islands affected by Dorian for the safety of the residents of the island, especially since some residents quarantine in tents.
"[The government] is still kind of putting all their eggs in this tourism basket and trying to bend the rules of COVID and what not, to keep that tourism going because that's their only generator," Mullen said. "And I understand that. And that's the biggest, you know, gem that we have to sell. But at this point, we've got to figure out how to do it safely and sustainably."
Jessica Mullen, a dual resident of The Bahamas and Canada, rode out Dorian in Elbow Cay, where the hurricane made landfall. (Image/Jessica Mullen)
The reaction of the non-governmental organizations
The tightening of travel with the pandemic has not only affected the economic recovery, but also the physical recovery as the NGOs and second homeowners were impacted by the original lockdowns. In the face of the pandemic, a majority of the NGOs had to leave the islands for the health of their own employees and volunteers.
A repeated sentiment among the people who spoke with AccuWeather was a resounding gratitude toward both NGOs and second homeowners, despite some of their stays lasting for just months, and many of the Abaco residents who AccuWeather spoke with attributed a large amount of progress to the NGOs.
"They gave people in the community the hope to know that, you know what, we may be battered, we may be bruised, but people out there know what's going on. We're not alone," Carter said. After the storm's battering, he added, "It felt like we were cut off from the world, literally."
The island had limited telecommunications after Dorian. The WiFi was down in some areas, and Dorian had damaged a large portion of the power grid and water lines.
"It felt like, that's it. No one, no one will remember that we're here on this little island, you know," Carter said. But when NGOs started coming in, followed by second homeowners bringing supplies to the people on the island who they knew, spirits rebounded.
"That gave everybody the kind of confidence to be like, 'Alright, we can make it another day. We can go another week. We can go another month,'" Carter remarked. "Without that, people would have been willing to move. Honestly, even hard-bred Abaconians who generations of [their] family have lived here. A lot of them were considering [the possibility that] 'I'm moving,' you know. So it meant a lot to see stuff like that happen, in my opinion."
Hill expressed similar sentiments.
"We felt very disconnected from the world," Hill said, noting that COVID-19 had made the islanders go back to a feeling of disconnection that Dorian had initially brought before the NGOs had arrived.
NGOs began to remove most of their people from the island as the reach of the coronavirus grew -- a move that many of the residents of Abaco who spoke with AccuWeather said was a good move for the safety of those who had helped them.
Garnell Stuart, a resident of Marsh Harbour, explained to AccuWeather that although many of the NGOs had left due to COVID-19, they had also "trained-out" some locals before leaving.
Garnell Stuart was a music teacher before Hurricane Dorian and has played a role in recovery efforts after the storm. (Garnell Stuart/IMAGES by Alexander/ www.ibabahamas.com)
Her cousin, who had worked for Water Mission, had been trained to continue keeping one of the NGO's programs functioning, Stuart said, acting as one of a handful of individuals operating from the base on behalf of the NGO.
"They may have just one or two key individuals on base in Abaco who are helping out," Stuart explained, adding that the small numbers of NGO members left are partly because the "disaster mode" phase has passed "and their incentives aren't to take over. Their incentives are just to get the ball going."
However, the absence of help from NGOs was still noticeable. World Central Kitchen had previously played a role in distributing food from Marsh Harbour to northern Abaco. The organization's volunteers made the hour-and-a-half to two-hour drive daily on an island, where gasoline and propane were valuable commodities for months after the storm. With their access to transportation, they were able to distribute food from Treasure Key, to Blackwood to Cooperstown to the community of Crown Haven on the most northwestern part of the island to deliver food to community center dropoffs.
Again, many of the Abaconians expressed gratitude toward NGOs, including World Central Kitchen as well as an understanding of the scenario with the coronavirus in play. However, the beginning of their absence was like a rug being pulled out from under some people.
"When that stopped, you had a lot of people who were already dependent on the daily delivery from World Central Kitchen like, 'Whoa, this isn't happening anymore,'" Carter said.
In the next several weeks, people started reaching out to help others and sharing what they had in their stock and pantries. One volunteer unaffiliated with any organization came through for North Abaco, Carter said, independently seeking funding and networking and setting up a system where a food truck from a supermarket would deliver groceries to a town, and some of the food was even flown in on a daily basis.
The volunteer stepping up was enough to carry north Abaco for months until the communities could connect with IDEA Relief.
"I'm telling you, she [the volunteer] is an honorary Abaconian, Bahamian citizen. I mean, literally, she did quite a bit," Carter said, adding, "COVID-19 has been a thorn in everyone's side, just to say the least."
That thorn that has also cut into recovery efforts from Dorian, affecting the lives of Abaconians even a year later.
But although a majority of the islanders AccuWeather spoke with expressed frustration with a slow response time from the federal government while facing the two disasters, many also expressed a hope and determination to pull through stronger than before.
"Adversity is a part of life," Carter said. "It's just the amount of adversity one goes through that separates what a person can handle from what another person cannot handle emotionally."
Carter added that from adversity and strife, "You become victorious in some ways," and people have hope that in the end things will be better than they were before. He expanded on the sentiment, saying it's like looking at something brand new, and looking at it through that lens.
"But emotionally," he said, "it's a toll."
Additional reporting by Mark Puleo.
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