At Dorian's ground zero, a struggle to recover six months later

By Tom Tracy - Florida Catholic

MARSH HARBOUR, Great Abaco Island | Arriving at Marsh Harbour’s airport — with its check-in area now situated in a trailer and with a flank of Bahamas immigration officers scanning for undocumented persons who may seek to return here after Hurricane Dorian — gives a sense of unreality in the historic storm’s ground zero.

Located in the northern Bahamas due east of West Palm Beach, Florida, Great Abaco Island, apart from recently cleared roads and preliminary debris removal, looks almost as if it is now waking up from the Category 5 Dorian. The 2019 hurricane dealt its most lethal blow here in the form of 200 mph wind gusts and a storm surge of 18-23 feet above normal tide levels. 

Striking the Bahamas in the early days of September 2019, Dorian was the strongest hurricane on record for the islands and tied a record for the strongest Atlantic hurricane to make landfall. Its movement slowed to 1 mph as it transitioned west from Abaco to nearby Grand Bahama. Twisted structures, demolished homes and boats run aground from tidal surge still define the Marsh Harbour downtown. 

“The government is trying to determine how we move forward with another hurricane season approaching. They want to do things not just for a quick fix for today, because we have to look at hurricanes differently,” said Eulie Bastian Elliott, director of the Office Family Life and Hurricane Dorian relief response specialist for the Archdiocese of Nassau. “Dorian was the worst we have ever experienced,”

Elliott retired after 37 years working for the Bahamas government as a CPA and has made several trips to Abaco since Dorian. 

The hurricane displaced an estimated 70,000 people throughout the Bahamas, causing severe damage or destruction to more than 13,000 homes, or some 45% of all homes on Abaco and Grand Bahama.

 “The unfortunate part was the loss of so many lives. I don’t think the government has a final count yet of lives lost because a lot of the people in Abaco were undocumented Haitians and it is difficult to come up with numbers,” Elliott said.

The official death toll stands at 70 but the real number is assumed to be higher, as many others are still unaccounted for. Two shantytown areas where undocumented people lived in substandard housing that were severely flooded during Dorian have been cleared and sealed off, with the government vowing not to allow another encampment of illegal housing again.

 

CHURCH LEVELED

As things stand, there are no clergy or church staff stationed on Abaco due to the lack of consistent electrical power, clean water and appropriate housing. Nearby St. Francis de Sales Parish is intact and celebrates Mass every other week with a visiting priest who flies in for the service. But the church of Sts. Mary and Andrew in Treasure Cay was leveled by several feet of storm surge. 

Many Abacoans evacuated before Dorian by plane and ships, with thousands housed in one of seven shelters on New Providence Island. Now only one remains partially open. Others took temporary shelter in Florida and elsewhere. 

Elliott said that only during the Christmas week did an uptick of Abacoans return to have a look at their damaged homes and visit family members who stayed behind, while others have decided to stay away from Abaco indefinitely. 

Elliott said when she visited, she spent a weekend in Marsh Harbour because “you need to spend time and talk with residents. They need some counseling down there because the folks are really traumatized.”  

“Everybody wants to tell their story about Dorian,” she said. “It is amazing that when they begin to talk to you, all of a sudden they just stop talking — they become overwhelmed and aren’t able to continue.”

Nassau Archbishop Patrick Pinder led a delegation of senior staff from the Archdiocese of Miami’s Catholic Charities on a post-Dorian tour of Abaco and Grand Bahamas Feb. 19-21. He pointed out the near ruins that were once the primary and secondary school facilities at St. Francis de Sales Parish, along with the Every Child Counts School for special needs students that remains closed. 

The Archdiocese of Nassau launched the Each One Reach One initiative of its Bahamas Catholic Board of Education in support of some 220 students from Abaco and Grand Bahama who enrolled in Catholic schools in and around the capital city of Nassau in New Providence. 

Many Catholic school teachers and faculty from Abaco likewise have been accommodated elsewhere in the Bahamas. Volunteers from abroad have been making some preliminary repairs on the St. Francis de Sales school, and the Nassau Archdiocese has made a public commitment to slowly restore the schools back into operation in phases, relative to the population returning to Abaco. 

Archbishop Pinder told Peter Routsis-Arroyo, CEO of Miami’s Catholic Charities, and Msgr. Roberto Garza, Charities’ board chairman, that much remains unknown about the prospect of getting back to normal in Abaco. 

 

NO ONE TO SHIP TO

Although Catholic Charities Miami has been shipping donations of relief and rebuilding supplies to Grand Bahama, Abaco isn’t fully ready to receive donations, with no working infrastructure nor church staff yet in place. (South Florida Catholics contributed a record $700,000 toward Catholic Charities’ Dorian relief fund.)

Though damaged, St. Francis de Sales Church served as a shelter for weeks after the hurricane. “But it became difficult to immediately rebuild (in Abaco) because you had no utilities and no structure on the ground,” Archbishop Pinder said. “You had no one to ship to. All the people you normally know on the ground were no longer there.”

Archbishop Pinder noted the Bahamas government has announced a major project to revitalize tourism in Abaco: a resort in southern Abaco which during the construction phase will engage 600 people and in the operational phase even more. A series of domed temporary housing units is being readied for workers there. 

“Because so many have evacuated and have no homes to come back to that has affected the recovery, there is no doubt about it, but gradually Abaco is coming back,” Archbishop Pinder said.

He added that he is committed to rebuilding Sts. Mary and Andrew Church in Treasure Cay. A Miami design firm has already drafted plans for the new structure. But he wondered what “spark” will stimulate the rejuvenation of this little piece of the Bahamas. 

He noted that a grocery store and some other businesses are functioning again, but added that he saw a report that said 11% of businesses on the island will not function again.

“If the economy begins to regenerate itself it will attract other people too. The real question is what is the ignition factor; what is it that will happen to make things kick off,” the archbishop said.

RELATED STORIES

• Catholic Charities CEO: Building materials a priority for Bahamas 
• Post-Dorian partnership to rejuvenate communities in Grand Bahama.
• To donate to the Hurricane Dorian relief fund, go to www.ccadm.org.