Hurricane Dorian - Update 1

Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas as a category five hurricane in early September, killing scores of people and displacing many more. The Salvation Army has been operating in the Bahamas since the 1930's and have been working on response activities since day one.

Having arrived in Nassau, Bahamas, on Monday - after 36 hours in transit - I've spent the last two days being orientated to the overall programme we are offering. We are operating range of response projects over three key locations: Nassau (New Providence), Freeport (Grand Bahama) and the Abaco Islands. At the moment they are still concentrating on support for those that have been displaced to New Providence and distribution of necessary shelter and non-food items to those in Freeport.

We have three teams being established. Carolynn Barkhouse (Canada) is leading the team in Nassau, Zach Hodgeson (USA) is leading the team in Freeport and I will be responsible for the team in Marsh Harbour, Abaco Islands.

A key challenge that we are facing is identifying and locating people that need assistance. The worst affected communities were on Abaco, but consisted primarily of undocumented immigrants from Haiti. The government figures (61 dead and 860 missing) ONLY include Bahamian citizens. No undocumented people are included in any official figures or supports and this is despite 5-10,000 Haitians being in the worst affected area. It is possible that there are many bodies still under uncleared debris in this neighbourhood, but they are not government priority.

Also, the government are using the displacement of undocumented people as an excuse to conduct deportations. Some of these families have lived in the Bahamas for three or four generations but are now being placed on planes and sent to Haiti where they know no-one and have no means of support. It is also costing places like Abaco significant amounts of willing labour.

The rest of my week will be assisting the team in Nassau with community assessments in areas that were flooded, to see if we can utilise some of the many in-kind donations we've received to assist them. Then I will head to Abaco for the first time on Saturday and start to establish our next projects there.

The in-kind materials have been donated by Norwegian Cruise Lines and the Government of Puerto Rico, along with some United States organisations. We have somewhere between 800 and 1200 pallets of mixed donations that arrived with no inventory that we have had to store, sort and prepare for distribution. While the donation appears generous, it is costing a lot of time, storage and money just to sort through it and find out whether we can use it. Currently we have some of it stored at the local Coca Cola bottling plant (thanks to an advisory board member who works for CC) and some of it in a warehouse at the local Bacardi distributors.

We are staying at the Divisional Headquarters in Nassau, and it's pretty comfortable on our fold up cots. The warmth is welcome after a cold Tasmanian winter and the team we have of local and international staff is working well together.