Hurricane Dorian’s aftermath in the Bahamas

Our live coverage of Hurricane Dorian’s devastation in the Bahamas has ended. Here’s where things stand as of Sunday afternoon.

The death toll: At least 43 people are dead, and officials expect that number to rise dramatically as rescue efforts continue.

The displaced: More than 70,000 people are homeless on Grand Bahama and the Abaco Islands, the parts of the Bahamas hardest hit by the hurricane.

The recovery: Search and recovery efforts in the Bahamas have been slowed down by ravaged infrastructure, after Dorian left behind piles of rubble and splintered homes.

The evacuees: A cruise ship brought nearly 1,500 hurricane survivors from the Bahamas to a port in Florida on Saturday. Evacuation efforts continued on Sunday with at least one charter flight bringing people from Marsh Harbour to Nassau.

Damage in Canada: Dorian is no longer a hurricane, but its heavy rains and powerful winds left hundreds of thousands of people without power as the storm made landfall near Nova Scotia on Saturday evening.

As Hurricane Dorian continues to move along Canada’s Maritime Provinces, nearly 380,000 homes are without power.

As at 8:20 a.m. ET Saturday, 378,735 customers were without power, according to Nova Scotia Power.

The company said in an update on Facebook that “the full picture of damage won’t be known until later today.”

CNN’s Victor Blackwell reports from Nassau, Bahamas, where he witnessed the devastation Hurricane Dorian brought down on the islands.

He spoke with some residents about the overwhelming effect the storm had on them, including one young survivor who witnessed the horrifying moment a woman was swept away with a baby.

“She was trying to go back in the house” to get something, he said. “But when the water hit her she was gone with the baby,” he said.

“I haven’t heard from a lot of my family members … some of my cousins, aunts, a lot of people.”

Watch the interview here:

video

Young Dorian survivor saw woman get swept away with baby

All 100 of these generators were purchased in Florida and are being shipped to the Bahamas.

A man walked into a Costco in Florida and left with 100 generators, all of which are heading to the Bahamas.

His receipt read $49,285.70 and most of that came from paying $450 a pop for 100 generators. Peas, beans, coffee, salt, pepper and other essentials made up the rest of his mega purchase from a Costco in Jacksonville, Florida, on Wednesday.

All of it is going to those in need on the hard-hit islands of Grand Bahama and Abaco, he said.

The man wishes not to be named. He said he doesn’t want the attention and would rather that people focus on helping those affected by Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas.

A photo of the anonymous donor was snapped by Alec Sprague, who was shopping at Costco at the time.

“I had to go up there to him and say, ‘Thank you for doing this,’” Sprague said. “I am so glad to see someone doing this.”

One of the areas most affected by Hurricane Dorian’s fury is known as the Mudd, a small town in Marsh Harbour in the northern Abaco Island.

There, concrete walls were smashed entirely and roofs were blown away, making it difficult to even locate one’s own home. 

Local authorities are worried that many victims might be under rubble, but they can’t determine how many. In addition, recovering these bodies, the government says, will be a difficult task. 

Most of the residents of the Mudd are Haitian migrants fleeing poverty and some of them are undocumented, who are too afraid to seek help in Nassau out of fear of deportation.

CNN’s Paula Newton reports from Marsh Harbour:

Bahamians who lost everything in the devastating passage of Hurricane Dorian were scrambling Saturday to escape the worst-hit islands by sea or by air.

The Bahamas Ministry of Health and the Pan American Health Organization said that there is “no quarantine, cholera or epidemics in the Bahamas,” in a statement shared with CNN.

“Floods can potentially increase the transmission of water-borne and communicable diseases,” the statement said.

“Nevertheless, there have not been any detected cholera cases at the moment, nor any increased number of infectious diseases due to the hurricane. The Ministry of Health and PAHO recommends that the population in the affected areas drink and use safe water and also continue to practice good hygiene such as hand washing to prevent water-borne diseases.”

The ministry said it will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates.

Celebrity chef José Andrés took to his official Twitter page Saturday from devastated Marsh Harbour in Abaco where he and his nonprofit World Central Kitchen (WCK) have fed thousands of survivors this week, and want to feed more.

Andrés tweeted that his organization had delivered 14,000 meals on Friday, at least 24,000 on Saturday and could deliver as many as 30,000 with additional helicopters. 

The renowned chef asked the US Coast Guard and USAID for any available helicopters, later going on to commend the US Coast Guard for their broader relief efforts in the area.

He tweeted overnight pictures from a primary school shelter in Marsh Harbour, adding: “I’ve met so many heroes here I lose count…we cannot let them down.”

Dorian is now a post-tropical cyclone, according to the National Hurricane Center’s latest advisory on Saturday evening ahead of an expected landfall in Canada.

Dorian lost its status as a hurricane is because it no longer has a warm core, CNN meteorologist Gene Norman explained, though it is still a low-pressure system.

But even though it’s no longer classified as a hurricane, the storm is still dangerous with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph — the equivalent to a Category 2 hurricane. Hurricane warnings remain in effect for parts of the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, the center said.

“While the change in classification is technical, the fact of the matter is it’s still a dangerous situation and people in the area should not let their guard down,” Norman said.

A makeshift mortuary has been set up in Marsh Harbour, one of the areas of the Bahamas hit hardest by Hurricane Dorian, according to CNN’s Paula Newton.

Newton said she saw at least two bodies on a truck at the site. The morticians told her that their work has been slow because recovering bodies has proved to be a difficult task. Many bodies are submerged in water and require dive teams to recover them.

“We are still waiting to do our work,” one of the morticians told Newton.

As CNN’s Gary Tuchman toured devastated areas in the town on Friday, he said the smell of death lingered in the air.

Search and rescue personnel who arrived with cadaver dogs on the Abaco Islands, where Marsh Harbour is located, brought body bags and coolers to store human remains, said Joy Jibrilu, director general of the country’s tourism and aviation ministry.

Workers also brought equipment to count the dead and to understand the scope of damage, Jibrilu said.

US Agency for International Development Administrator Mark Green announced $1 million in additional humanitarian assistance to help people in the Bahamas affected by Hurricane Dorian. That brings USAID’s funding for the response to more than $2.8 million, the agency said in a news release.

The funding will provide food, shelter, water containers and hygiene kits to people on the Abaco Islands and the Grand Bahama Islands, Green said. It will also help transport US government supplies to the Bahamas by air and by sea.

More than 47 metric tons of USAID supplies have arrived in the Bahamas so far to assist about 44,000 people, the agency said. It added that its partner, the Bahamas Red Cross, will also distribute supplies including hygiene kits, portable stoves and towels to people affected by the hurricane.

About 70,000 people in the Bahamas have been left homeless after Hurricane Dorian flattened their neighborhoods. The death toll, now at 43, is expected to rise drastically, officials said.

Dorian has once again strengthened into a Category 2 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph, according to a special advisory from the National Hurricane Center.

The storm had been expected to maintain Category 1 strength as it moved through the Canadian Maritimes and then finally weaken when it crossed into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, according to CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar.

If Dorian maintains Category 2 strength when it makes “official” landfall over Halifax, Nova Scotia, it will be the strongest storm to hit the provincial capital since Hurricane Juan in 2003.

It’s expected to make landfall in Nova Scotia on Saturday evening, CNN meteorologist Robert Shackelford said. A hurricane warning remains in effect for eastern Nova Scotia and western Newfoundland.

A quick refresher on storm categories: Meteorologists use the Saffir Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale to measure a hurricane’s strength.

The system divides storms into five categories:

• Category 1: Winds 74 to 95 mph (Minor damage)
• Category 2: Winds 96 to 110 mph (Extensive damage — Can uproot trees and break windows)
• Category 3: Winds 111 to 129 mph (Devastating — Can break windows and doors)
• Category 4: Winds 130 to 156 mph (Catastrophic damage — Can tear off roofs)
• Category 5: Winds 157 mph or higher (The absolute worst and can level houses and destroy buildings)

Ceva Seymour, 56, evacuated from Freeport with about 16 family members, including two three-year-old twins named Paris and London.

Seymour described how the roof of her home on Grand Bahama Island began to lift up due to the high winds at the height of Hurricane Dorian. She said she and her husband used basic tools like ropes, nails and hammers to cinch the roof of their home to the floor.

“It was very intense. You couldn’t sleep,” Seymour said. “I prayed a lot and asked God to calm the storm.”

Though her roof managed to stay on, others weren’t as fortunate, she said. Some of her relatives who live on the north side of Grand Bahama Island lost their homes entirely due to flooding.

Now, Seymour said she and her family are headed to her sister’s house in Port St. Lucie, Florida, until Grand Bahama Island has water and electricity again. And though the past week has been incredibly stressful, she said she’s grateful. Not everyone in the Bahamas has family members in Florida who they can stay with temporarily. Others aren’t able to leave because they don’t have passports.

“Having to travel here is a burden eased off us,” Seymour said. “Because at least we have an opportunity to relax, whereas some others in the Bahamas can’t even have this privilege.”

“It hurts my heart,” she added.

More than 1,550 hurricane evacuees are aboard a cruise ship from Freeport in the Bahamas that’s heading to West Palm Beach in Florida, according to a Facebook post from the Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line.

People are already waiting at the Port of Palm Beach in hopes of reuniting with their family members.

Garrise Newbold, who lives in Georgia, is there with her four-year-old son. She’s hoping to reunite with about six relatives, including her grandmother and her great-grandmother. Her family had been without water and electricity for a while, Newbold said, so when she heard there would be a cruise ship helping to evacuate people from the Bahamas, she made sure the word got to her family members.

Garrise Newbold awaits the arrival of a cruise ship carrying her family members.

Newbold said her family members joined a long line of people early in the morning to board the ship in Freeport. Luckily, they managed to get on.

Weak phone connections have made it tough to communicate, Newbold said, so she’s only managed to speak to her relatives every two days or so.

Daisy Rolle is at the port in search of her sister Loretta Rahming.

Rolle said her sister had been staying at an assisted living center on the island of Bimini ever since she suffered a stroke about two years ago and was being tended to by a caretaker. Rolle said she spoke to her sister’s caretaker on Monday, a day after the storm hit, but hasn’t been able to make contact since then.

“I’m worried because I desperately need to hear if she is okay,” Rolle said. “I need to get her over there because she had a stroke two years ago and she cannot do anything for herself. If she can get around family members, we can take better care of her.”

Rolle said she has been reaching out to people from the island of Bimini, where she is from, to see if they can check on her sister, but that they’ve had difficulty accessing the home due to the damage and debris from the storm. So now, all Rolle can do is wait.

“I was hoping that maybe she’d be here but that hasn’t happened,” Rolle said. “I’m hoping that maybe in the next few days that somewhere, I can get to her or she can get to me.”

Hundreds of people have lined up at a port on the devastated island of Abaco in the Bahamas to take a ferry back to Nassau.

Some people at the port have been waiting there since early morning after hearing that there would be boats for them to leave today.

Many of them recounted horrific stories of survival by breaking through rooftops or swimming onto boats to try and ride out the storm.

Some said that they had family members still missing and that they witnessed friends and neighbors drown in the storm surge.

A CNN team that has just arrived on Marsh Harbour, Abaco say parts of it now resemble a ghost town as people have been evacuated.

A view of damage from Hurricane Dorian on September 5, 2019, in Marsh Harbor.

In the last 48 hours, private boats, choppers and some passenger planes arrived at the town’s ports, airports and small marinas, according to sources on the ground, and cell phone service was also restored on Saturday.

Along with the scattered debris, garbage is starting to pile up throughout Grand Abaco.

Heavy equipment will be needed to remove the tons of wreckage and debris that now cover the island like a thick carpet, after recovery efforts are complete.

All the evacuees arriving at the Port of Palm Beach early Saturday morning are properly documented to enter the US, according to Customs and Border Protection.

CBP Public Affairs Liaison Michael Silva confirmed that all evacuees were either US Citizens, US residents, non-US Citizens with visas or had other proper documentation to enter the US.

In total, CBP said there were 1,437 evacuees arriving, which included 516 US citizens, 897 non-US citizens, 23 green card holders and one Medivac.

Germaine Smith was one of thousands of residents trapped in Hurricane Dorian’s path in the northern Bahamas.

Smith, who’s lived almost all her life on the Abaco Islands, had everything ready as the storm neared the island: “food prepared, water, everything.”

But nothing could have prepared her for what came next.

Germaine Smith hid in her bathtub during the storm.

“I was sitting down in my bedroom looking out the window, watching the breeze. My neighbor across the street has double doors and then… the breeze opened the doors, broke (them) off,” Smith said. “Next thing I know I see his roof just flying off and it came toward my room.”

Moments later a large tree smashed through the window she was sitting next to, forcing her to run for the bathroom where she spent the next hours crunched in her bathtub, praying to stay alive.

“That’s what saved me,” she said of the bathroom, a place she always hears being referred to as a “safe haven” during storms.

She got inside the small room’s tub, listening to the wind pound and push against the walls. The island was rattled by hurricane-force winds for more than 48 hours as Dorian lingered over the islands, pounding the same battered places again and again.

“I was just praying to God just to save my life cause I was scared,” Smith said. “I didn’t think I was going to make it.”

Bahamas resident spent more than 18 hours in her bathtub as violent winds ripped through her home

More than 1,550 Hurricane Dorian evacuees from the Bahamas are on board the Grand Celebration Humanitarian Cruise ship sailing back to West Palm Beach, Florida, according to the Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line Facebook page.

“Bahamas, we’re still with you,” the cruise line said on Facebook.

“Every donation we’ve received so far has significantly helped in our mission to bring relief and aid to our brothers and sisters on Grand Bahama Island – our beloved second home. Together with first responders and volunteers, we were able to provide Bahamian residents with food, water, personal hygiene products, medical equipment, generators, and other desperately-needed supplies.”

US Customs and Border Protection is working with the cruise line and will be processing the arrival of passengers.

The ship is expected to dock at the Port of Palm Beach early Saturday morning.

The United Nations believes at least 70,000 people are homeless on Abaco and Grand Bahamas, according to a statement Friday. 

It is working to provide 1,000 tarpaulins to replace roofs stripped from homes by Hurricane Dorian.

“The Bahamas faces a long road to recovery,” said Jan-Willem Wegdam, who led a UN Emergency Response Team which arrived in Nassau on Wednesday.

“Building back the destroyed infrastructure, with increased resistance in the face of extreme weather, will be critical to increase the resilience of the communities.”

People wait to evacuated in private boats at the Marsh Harbor Port.

Elbow Key Island, Bahamas.

Nearly a week after Hurricane Dorian turned parts of the northern Bahamas into piles of debris, the nation has only started unraveling the damage.

The death toll rose to 43 and officials say that number will go up drastically as hundreds of residents remain missing, buried under the rubble. Grand Bahama and the Abaco Islands were hit the hardest by the hurricane, which ripped off roofs, scattered pole lines and boats, and flattened entire neighborhoods.

“It was like an atomic bomb went off,” said Sherrie Roberts, who survived the hurricane on Abaco Islands.

In the neighborhoods of the wrecked islands, reminders of the disaster were everywhere.

“When we were driving up, we could smell … death,” CNN’s Patrick Oppmann said about Bevans Town on the island of Grand Bahama.

The area is in ruins, he said.

“Every house, every structure, every life has been essentially destroyed in this area.”

Read more, here:

GREAT ABACO, BAHAMAS - SEPTEMBER 6: Wesley Joseph walks through fallen trees and debris on devastated Great Abaco Island on September 5, 2019 in the Bahamas. Hurricane Dorian hit the island chain as a category 5 storm battering them for two days before moving north. (Photo by Jose Jimenez/Getty Images) (Photo by Jose Jimenez/Getty Images)

The Bahamas' hurricane death toll is rising fast as survivors try to get out

In a story of how residents came together to save one another amid dangerous conditions, Jensen Burrows and d’Sean Smith – as well as a dozen other jet skiers – rescued 100 people who were trapped in flooded homes in the Bahamas on Tuesday.

“They did a phenomenal job, not just with us. What we saw when we came out is that they continued to go back in and over and over again,” Michael Pintard, the Minister of Agriculture and Marine Resources in the Bahamas, told CNN on Friday.

A dozen jet skiers worked together to rescue 100 people on Tuesday.

Burrows and Smith, two friends that are part of the GB Jet Ski Club, were the men that drove their jet skis to save the minister and his family. Jason Albury rode on board to navigate them to the minister’s house and help with the rescue.

“The wind was pelting you, so it felt like rocks being pelted at you. I had his daughter and my friend, and the jet ski tipped over,” Smith said. “Jensen had the minister and his wife and Jensen also flipped over. He insisted we take the daughter and wife to safety first, so we did and came back for him.”

Before the dramatic rescue of the Pintard family, Smith and Burrows had tried to rescue Smith’s cousin on Monday. Conditions were too rough to ride safely, but they had to try.

After a few failed attempts to ride out on Monday, the pair made it to Pioneers Way, a street south of the decimated Grand Bahama Airport. They say they saved dozens of people pleading for help, among them pregnant women and even a baby in a Styrofoam cooler.

Read more about their rescue mission here:

Jensen Burrows drives his jet ski carrying a woman who was trapped by flood waters during in Freeport, Grand Bahama, Bahamas.

Jet skiers saved 100 people trapped in flooded homes in the Bahamas

An aerial view of damage from Hurricane Dorian on September 5, 2019, in Marsh Harbour.

Bahamas Air resumed its service to Marsh Harbour in Abaco and Freeport in Grand Bahama, offering several free relief flights between those hard-hit areas and Nassau, according to public broadcaster ZNS.

Free relief flights have been scheduled, which includes:

• Nassau to Marsh Harbour at 7 a.m., which then departs Marsh Harbor at 9 a.m. to return to Nassau
• Nassau to Freeport at 10:30 a.m., which then departs Freeport at 12:30 p.m. to return to Nassau
• Nassau to Freeport at 2 p.m., which then departs Freeport to Nassau at 3:30 p.m.

There are also flights into Treasure Key, ZNS reports. A flight is scheduled to leave Nassau to Treasure Key at 3 p.m., which returns at 4:45 p.m.

ZNS also advised waiting passengers where they should go to access and request flights, saying they could not be booked through online reservations. 

The Bahamas Health Minister, Duane Sands, acknowledged Friday that there are uncollected bodies evident in areas where Hurricane Dorian caused devastation, adding that he expected the death toll would rise significantly.

“I am sure that your reporters have seen uncollected bodies on the ground. I am sure there are many person who know individuals who have personally lost loved ones. So where we end up with the death toll is likely to be significantly higher than where we are right now.” 

The ruins of homes in Elbow Key Island, Bahamas.

Sands said in a press briefing that there would be a new process for updating the death toll, which involves comparing numbers from health teams and the Royal Bahamas Police, in an attempt to avoid getting any “mixed information” and to ensure accuracy.

He insisted that this was in no way an attempt to suppress information.

“I want to be very clear,” he told reporters. “Certainly, The Ministry of Health and the Government of the Bahamas has no interest in suppressing information. What we want to do is ensure the information that is given is accurate.” 

On Friday night Sands confirmed in a text message to CNN that the death toll from Hurricane Dorian is now up to 43.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has sent a Disaster Assistance Response Team “to coordinate the US response and provide technical support to the National Emergency Management Authority,” at the request of the Bahamian government.

Pompeo added that the country “extends its condolences to all those in the Bahamas who have lost loved ones” in his latest statement on Hurricane Dorian.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pictured in August.