Photo courtesy of The National Weather Service
The hurricane known as “Joaquin” rushed through the Bahamas as a Category 4 storm with 130 mph winds causing problems in the entire East Coast. Meanwhile, the United States fears an increasingly forceful storm rapidly reaching the north of the country. City officials from the Carolinas to New England are alerting their citizens in order to commence preparation for what could potentially happen, but the residents of the Bahamas are still the ones suffering the most.
“The Bahamas consist(s) of several islands and cays. There are islands in the Bahamas that are completely flooded right now like Long Island and Cat Island. People are trapped in the house in Long Island and the phone services stopped working so they couldn’t ask for help,” said Bahamian third-year architecture major Chavi Gupta from Nassau, Bahamas.
“This has been the first category 4 storm since 1866. Only the southern islands really suffered. People from the central (and) northern islands are assisting in anyway possible,” said second-year architecture major Tylen Asher from Nassau, Bahamas. “The friends and family I have on those central islands lost their roofs and had terrible flooding.”
“It also took long to reach them. They are expected to have a power outage for a bit, but the storm came very unexpectedly and people are still waiting to hear from their family and friends,” said Asher.
“I have experienced a hurricane before, but not as bad as the current one right now. My general family is safe so far and they have shutters to protect themselves. My family lives in Abaco and Nassau and the hurricane is still in the center of the Bahama, Rum Cay. The weather by them is sunny right now and a little bit of showers,” said Gupta.
Managing Editor of the Nassau Guardian and intimate family member of SCAD student Tylen Asher Candia Dames reports in a newscast posted on YouTube earlier this week. She’s featured beside two sisters of another family.
“After riding out the ferocious storm and Crooked Island… they boarded an aircraft after they were told to leave. They have nothing left, they’re homeless, but they tell us that they’re glad their children are safe and they’re happy to be alive,” said one of the sisters.
The family thought it was just a rainy day until they got a text message of the conditions leading to their evacuation. The children were quickly loaded into two cars in order to find shelter. The debris from the roof dropped in and stirred fear with the possibility of it blowing and, inevitably, it did. Twenty one survivors remained in one bathroom to stay safe.
When returning to their home, they found nothing. With lack of communication for such an extensive period of time, they lost track of it altogether.
The sisters searched through feet of water flooding in search of food for the children who do not understand the full extent of what they’re up against.
Both students at SCAD who are from and whose families reside in the Bahamas currently voice a common opinion of the disaster: it’s unpredictable.
