Hurricane Dorian: Shocking Images of Teen Almost Drowning

Practically parking over the Bahamas for a day and a half, Hurricane Dorian pounded away at the islands Tuesday in a watery onslaught that devastated thousands of homes, trapped people in attics and crippled hospitals. At least five deaths were reported, with the full extent of the damage far from clear.

The United Nations and the International Red Cross began mobilizing to deal with the unfolding humanitarian crisis in the wake of the most powerful hurricane on record ever to hit the Bahamas.

Dorian’s punishing winds and torrential rain battered the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama, which have a combined population of about 70,000 and are known for their marinas, golf courses,

and all-inclusive resorts. The Grand Bahama airport was under 6 feet (2 meters) of water.

Bahamian officials received a “tremendous” number of calls from people in flooded homes, and desperate callers trying to find loved ones left messages with local radio stations.

One station said it got reports of a 5-month-old baby stranded on a roof and a woman with six grandchildren who cut a hole in a roof to escape rising floodwaters.

At least two designated storm shelters flooded. The U.S. Coast Guard airlifted at least 21 people injured on Abaco. Rescuers also used jet skis to reach some people.

“We will confirm what the real situation is on the ground,” Health Minister Duane Sands said. “We are hoping and praying that the loss of life is limited.”

Red Cross spokesman Matthew Cochrane said more than 13,000 houses, or about 45% of the homes in Grand Bahama and Abaco, were believed to have been severely damaged or destroyed. U.N. officials said more than 60,000 people on the hard-hit islands will need food, and the Red Cross said some 62,000 will need clean drinking water.

The Red Cross authorized a half-million dollars for the first wave of disaster relief, Cochrane said.

“What we are hearing lends credence to the fact that this has been a catastrophic storm and a catastrophic impact,” he said.

As of 11 a.m. EDT, Dorian’s winds had dipped to 110 mph (177 kph), making it a Category 2 hurricane, down from a terrifying Category 5 when it struck. The storm was centered about 45 miles (70 kilometers) north of Freeport and 105 miles (170 kilometers) east of Fort Pierce, Florida.

After standing still for nearly a day, it was on the move again, but just barely, pushing northwest at 2 mph (3 kph), or about as fast as a person walks.

Hurricane-force winds extended up to 60 miles (95 kilometers) from its center.

NASA satellite imagery through Monday night showed spots in the Bahamas where Dorian had dumped as much as 35 inches (89 centimeters) of rain, said private meteorologist Ryan Maue.

The Bahamas’ health minister said that Dorian devastated the health infrastructure on Grand Bahama and that severe flooding rendered the main hospital there unusable.

Sands said the main hospital in Marsh Harbor in the Abaco islands was intact and sheltering 400 people but in need of food, water, medicine, and surgical supplies.

He said crews were trying to airlift five to seven kidney failure patients from Abaco who had not received dialysis since Friday.

To the south, the Bahamas’ most populous island, New Providence, which is the site of the capital, Nassau, and has over a quarter-million people, suffered little damage.

Dorian was on track to approach the Florida coast later Tuesday and begin moving up the shoreline, but the threat to the state eased significantly, with forecasters not expecting a direct hit after all. The forecast instead showed North Carolina in the crosshairs toward the end of the week.

As Labor Day weekend drew to a close, over 2 million people in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina were warned to evacuate for fear Dorian could bring life-threatening storm-surge flooding even if the hurricane’s center stayed offshore, as forecast. Several large airports announced closings, and hundreds of flights were canceled.

Having seen storms swamp his home on the Georgia coast in 2016 and 2017, Joey Spalding of Tybee Island decided to empty his house rather than take any chances with Dorian.

He packed a U-Haul truck with tables, chairs, a chest of drawers, tools virtually all of his furnishings except for his mattress and a large TV and planned to park it on higher ground.

He also planned to shroud his house in the plastic wrap up to shoulder height and pile sandbags in front of the doors.

“In this case, I don’t have to come into a house full of junk,” he said. “I’m learning a little as I go.”

Leaving one person dead in its wake in Puerto Rico, Dorian hit the Bahamas on Sunday with sustained winds of 185 mph (295 kph) and gusts up to 220 mph (355 kph).

It tied the record for the strongest Atlantic hurricane ever to hit land, matching the Labor Day hurricane that struck Florida Gulf Coast in 1935, before storms were given names.

Scientists say climate change generally has been fueling more powerful and wetter storms, though they say linking any specific hurricane to global warming would require more detailed study.

In the Bahamas, choppy brown floodwaters reached roofs and the tops of palm trees.

Parliament member Iram Lewis said he feared waters would keep rising and stranded people would lose contact with officials as their cellphone batteries died.

“It is scary,” he said, adding that people were moving from one shelter to another as floodwaters kept surging. “We’re definitely in dire straits.”

Forecasters said that the storm had come to a near standstill because the steering currents in the atmosphere had collapsed, but that Dorian would resume moving later in the day, getting “dangerously close” to the Florida coast through Wednesday evening, very near Georgia and South Carolina coasts Wednesday night and Thursday, and near or over the North Carolina shoreline late Thursday.

Walt Disney World in Orlando planned to close in the afternoon, and SeaWorld shut down.

In South Carolina, Interstate 26 was turned into a one-way evacuation route away from Charleston on the coast, and Georgia officials likewise reversed lanes on I-16 on Tuesday to speed the flow of traffic away from the danger zone.

“We’re taking the ‘better safe than sorry’ attitude,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said.

Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Weissenstein from Nassau, Bahamas. Associated Press reporters Tim Aylen in Freeport and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.

source: usa.inquirer.net

Filipinos abroad mobilize to help country

HONG KONG—Filipinos abroad, who have spent harrowing days trying to contact loved ones after a typhoon devastated their homeland, are mobilizing to send relief, despite misgivings about corrupt local officials pocketing aid on the ground.

With thousands feared dead and aid only trickling in after Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (international name: “Haiyan”) laid waste to entire coastal towns on Friday, many among the 10-million-strong diaspora are still frantically trying to find out if their relatives are alive and their homes still standing.

And from Asian capitals to the United States and Europe, Filipino communities are taking to churches and social media sites to raise funds for communities left with nothing—and growing increasingly desperate.

In Hong Kong, where some 150,000 Filipinos work as domestic helpers, the Red Cross said a hotline set up to trace the missing had been overwhelmed since the typhoon smashed into the nation’s central islands, displacing an estimated 673,000.

“The maids were crying. They didn’t know what to do,” spokesperson Denise Wong told AFP.

Liezel Miralles, a 40-year-old domestic worker from Batad, a coastal town of 20,000 people, had not been able to contact her husband and other relatives to find out if they had survived.

“I feel very, very, very sad, my whole family is there,” Miralles said as she bought groceries for her employer at a street-side market. “There is no house, no phone, no connection.”

On Sunday, when Hong Kong’s downtown throngs with domestic helpers congregating on their day-off, worker groups will hold an “information drive” on the crisis and gather donations.

But support group United Filipinos is one of many organizations and individuals around the world planning to direct aid only to nongovernment agencies.

“We are afraid that if we send to the government, it will just to go their pockets and will not reach the beneficiaries,” secretary general Eman Villanueva told AFP.

“Politicians are using it for their own benefit even in the midst of this devastating situation. They are still thinking for themselves.”

In Singapore, Dimples Larrazabal said the 24 hours it took for her to get in touch with her mother, her brother and his family in the town of Ormoc in devastated Leyte province seemed like an eternity.

“At first I was half-positive (that things would be OK) because our house is a good structure,” said Larrazabal, a 35-year-old homemaker. But she began to panic after seeing photos showing the unimaginable devastation.

“That’s when I cried ‘Oh my God! Nothing was spared!” she said. “I knew that Ormoc was directly in the path of the typhoon.”

Social media sites were inundated with posts from people searching for missing relatives, uploading pictures of individuals and families on Facebook and Twitter in posts tagged #tracingPH or simply #missing.

Google said it had updated its Person Finder site—which helps people find loved ones after a disaster—to include Philippines’ mobile numbers.

Krima Molina, a 26-year-old teacher from storm-struck Leyte now living in Tokyo, said she watched in horror as Facebook posts from friends at home turned into increasingly desperate pleas for help.

Homeless survivors were becoming ill from exposure, left with no shelter but makeshift shanties made of plastic tarps draped over plywood, she said. “They need medicine. They need volunteer doctors. A lot of people are injured.”

Many of the homes destroyed have been built with the earnings of the staggering 10 percent of the population that works abroad.

source: globalnation.inquirer.net

Glimpses of devastation a day after ‘Yolanda’

ILOILO CITY – A day after Supertyphoon “Yolanda” unleashed its wrath, only glimpses of the devastation in the Visayas was possible as reports came in trickles from places that were still without power or means of communications.

At least 22 people were reported killed in Iloilo, northern Cebu, Roxas City in Capiz, and Aklan but the number was expected to increase since communication remained difficult in these places, along with Leyte province. Most of the worst hit areas were still inaccessible and had not submitted reports to Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Offices.

(Many more were reported dead in Leyte, with initial unofficial reports placing them over 100.)

Six people were reported dead in Iloilo, six more in Cebu, four in Antique and three each in Aklan and Capiz, according to initial reports as of Saturday afternoon.

Almost all houses on the coast or on island-villages were destroyed or badly damaged by strong winds and big waves. Fallen trees and electric posts blocked roads and rice fields were littered with blown off galvanized iron roofing.

The howling winds did not spare churches, municipal and school buildings and other structures made of concrete.

After the strong winds, badly hit municipalities were still threatened by flooding due to rising waters from upland areas.

In Negros Occidental, Governor Alfredo Marañon Jr. wept on Saturday morning upon seeing so many poor people rendered homeless in Cadiz City.

Aside from Cadiz, also hard hit in Negros Occidental were the cities of Sagay and Escalante and Toboso town, said the Provincial Disaster Management Team.

A report from the Provincial Social Welfare and Development Office showed at as of 6 a.m. on Saturday, 59,209 Negrenses were affected by the typhoon in 24 towns and cities in Negros Occidental and 12,992 were staying in 193 evacuation centers.





At least seven towns in northern Cebu remained isolated after being whipped by Yolanda.

Badly hit were Bogo City and the towns of Medellin, San Remegio, Daanbantayan on mainland Cebu and the municipalities of Sta Fe, Bantayan and Madridejos on Bantayan Island.

Local officials of the affected areas were appealing for help because the devastation was widespread.
“The devastation is overwhelming. We appeal for help from the national government and from international agencies and organizations,” said Iloilo provincial administrator Raul Banias after an aerial inspection of the worst-hit areas in northern and central Iloilo.

“If you see the devastation, you will cry,” said Mayor Patrick Escalante of Cadiz City, Negros Occidental, where at least 4,000 houses along the seashore and hinterland villages were destroyed.

Escalante appealed for food and other forms of assistance for the Cadiz victims to augment government help as the number of people in need was overwhelming.

The provinces of Capiz, Aklan, Antique and Iloilo were declared under a state of calamity by their respective provincial boards on Saturday to hasten the release of calamity funds.

Governor Marañon of Negros Occidental has asked the provincial board for a special session to declare the province under a state of calamity.

Cebu was already under a state of calamity following last month’s magnitude 7.2 earthquake.

Most of Panay Island was  without electricity for a second day on Saturday. Power was restored to parts of Iloilo City Friday evening.







Communication has been hampered by lack of telephone connections and mobile signals in municipalities.

The national road connecting Iloilo with Aklan and Capiz was impassable as of Saturday morning due to fallen trees and flooding.

Iloilo Vice Governor Raul Tupas said the supertyphoon also wiped out the livelihood of residents in coastal villages.

He cited the island village of Malangabang in Concepcion in Iloilo where at least 250 fishing boats were destroyed.

Tupas was acting as governor and chairman of the provincial disaster council because Governor Arthur Defensor was in Manila to attend the burial of his 14-month-old grandaughter.

In the capital town of Kalibo in Aklan, the ABL Sports Complex which served as an evacuation center and provincial command center was damaged when strong winds tore off a part of its roof.

At least 11,461 houses were destroyed and 6,855 others were damaged according to reports from six of the 15 towns of Aklan, according to Galo Ibardolaza, executive officer of the provincial disaster council.

“This is worse than Typhoon ‘Frank’,” said Aklan Gov. Florencio Miraflores, referring to the typhoon that devastated Aklan and other parts of Western Visayas in 2008.

Miraflores said it could take a month to fully restore electricity in the province due to the number of fallen electric posts and damaged connections.

At least 80 percent of houses and buildings, including the Immaculate Conception Metropolitan Cathedral and provincial capitol, were damaged or destroyed in Capiz, according to Gov. Victor Tanco.

“This is the worst calamity experienced by Capiz. We could not believed what happed,” Tanco told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

In Roxas City, shopping malls, churches and government buildings were damaged.

“It looks like Roxas City was crumpled. I have not seen a house without damage,” said Mayo Ala Celino.

Celino said assistance was also hampered by lack of personnel because the houses of most city hall employees and officials, including himself, had also been damaged.

In nothern Cebu, the towns of Bogo, Medellin, San Remegio, Daanbantayan, Sta. Fe, Bantayan and Madridejos were without communication, power and water supplies while only motorcycles and small vehicles could navigate the roads because of fallen trees.

Medellin Vice Mayor Alfonso Lim said they too needed food assistance for their people as the municipal government was unable to operate because government buildings were badly damaged.

The typhoon blew off the roofs of the public market, sports complex and public schools among others as about 70 percent to 80 percent of their houses, government structures and infrastructure were damaged by the typhoon.

In neighboring San Remegio town, about 90 percent of the houses were without roofs, said Councilor Jun Verallo.

Daanbantayan Mayor Augusto Corro said that at least 14 persons were injured by broken glass and flying GI sheets.

About 80 percent of the houses on Bantayan Island were destroyed.

In Sogod and Tabogon towns, fallen trees covered the roads. A ten-wheel truck carrying animal feed fell on its side in Tabogon.

Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III urged Cebuanos not to be disheartedned but to rise together.

“Let us be strong. We’ve gone through several calamities in the past. I know we can do this. We’re determined to surpass these adversities. Let’s continue to pray. Let’s continue to be safe,” he said.

(Reports from Nestor P. Burgos Jr., Carla P. Gomez, Ador Mayol, Jhunnex Napallacan and Doris C. Bongcac, Inquirer Visayas)

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net