Floridians send aid to Bahamas as Hurricane Dorian heads for Carolinas

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/04/dorian-storm-aid-florida-bahamas-carolinas-relief-supplies-charities

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The monster storm Hurricane Dorian was just under 100 miles off Daytona Beach in north-eastern Florida on Wednesday morning as people in the state and elsewhere began donating relief supplies for those affected in the catastrophic damage to parts of the Bahamas in the previous three days.

Hurricane Dorian destruction set to cost Bahamas 'up to billions'

North and South Carolina are braced for the brunt of the storm next to slam into the coast there, after brushing past Georgia and north-east Florida.

Dorian, still a category 2 hurricane, is expected to bring dangerous storm surges, with the threat of flooding, very high winds and torrential rain to the Carolinas.

In southern Florida, spared from the wrath of the hurricane, which had initially been projected to make landfall north of Miami, thousands were donating water, food and household supplies in a relief effort spearheaded by descendants of some of the city’s earliest settlers from the Bahamas.

Floridians showed up in droves on Tuesday to give cans of food, bottles of water and boxes of diapers to members of two historically black churches, whose volunteers were sorting them before they were to be flown to the devastated islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama.

“We have to channel all that anxiety into something positive,” relief coordinator Jonathan Archer said.

Archer is the former head of a parish in Long Island, Bahamas, and current rector of the Christ Episcopal church in Miami’s historic Coconut Grove neighborhood, some of whose first settlers hailed from the Bahamas.

Some of the volunteers were frantically trying to text cousins, uncles, aunts and nieces who braved the powerful storm in their island homes. Few had any luck on Tuesday after the Bahamian prime minister, Hubert Minnis, said: “We are in the midst of one of the greatest national crises in our country’s history.”

On Wednesday morning, the National Hurricane Center reported that Dorian was moving north-north-west at 8mph, parallel to the coast of north-east Florida, with maximum sustained winds of 105mph.

Although the center is offshore, outer bands of the huge storm were bringing blasting winds and torrential rain to the coast, and residents of coastal Georgia and the Carolinas were bracing for the impact, with hundreds of thousands of evacuations going on.

In Miami, many thoughts turned to the Bahamas. “I am grateful that we weren’t hit but the severity of the damage in Abaco and Freeport [the most damaged parts of the Bahamas] just breaks my heart,” said Diane Alexander, a 57-year-old retired teacher who has cousins in Nassau.

Alexander bought provisions for Dorian then decided to donate them when the storm no longer threatened a direct hit on Florida.

Practically parking over a portion of the Bahamas for a day and a half, Dorian pounded Abaco and Grand Bahama with winds up to 185mph and torrential rain, ripping apart homes and trapping people in their attics. The government on Tuesday had reported five deaths but the full extent of the damage was not yet clear.

The Florida state representative Shevrin Jones, who was asking people to donate, said one of his relatives is an officer with the Bahamas immigration agency and had been working as a first responder.

Jones tweeted a screenshot of a WhatsApp message he received from the relative, who said she and her rescue team had found family members curled up together, all of them dead.

The official death toll in the Bahamas so far is seven, but that is expected to rise, possibly dramatically, as aid and officials reach the scenes of the worst destruction. The capital, Nassau, escaped the storm, with the worst of it hitting Grand Bahama and Great Abaco islands.