The Bahamas Hurricane Relief

Disaster Profile

On September 1, 2019, Hurricane Dorian made landfall as a Category 5 hurricane in The Bahamas with wind speeds in excess of 185mph, lashing The Bahamian islands of Great Abaco (pop. ~17,200) and Grand Bahama (pop. ~51,000). After striking The Bahamas, Dorian’s travelling speed slowed to 1 mph over Grand Bahama, prolonging the island’s exposure to life-threatening storm surges of 18-23 feet above normal tide levels. Dorian is the strongest hurricane on record for The Bahamas and has tied a record for the strongest Atlantic hurricane to make landfall.

Program Work

With immense support from our local and global partners, we’ve committed to working in the Bahamas for at least two years and will honor this commitment as soon as it is safe for us to commence operations. Our primary focus will be on response work in some of the hardest-hit areas. Our long-term recovery program will target reconstruction in schools and critical community infrastructure (e.g. health clinics, libraries, homes, etc.).

Our teams had been working tirelessly to get schools back up and running in Marsh Harbour, performing work on seven schools, including Every Child Counts, St. Francis de Sales and Central Abaco Primary School (the biggest public school on the island).

Alongside our work in schools, we also had a queue of more than 120 homes; working on roofs, mucking and gutting and mold sanitation. We had expanded our work in homes extensively and added other community-based facilities, like a library and clinics, to our queue.

We are currently hiring local contractors to finish work that was partially complete when we suspended the program and, as COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, we look forward to returning with an expanded program.

A special thank you to our long-term partner, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, and generous supporters for helping us reach our initial funding goal.