The Tribune

IT is now more than four months since Hurricane Dorian hit The Bahamas – and still we do not have an accurate count of how many people were killed in the storm.

The official death toll stalled at 70, with no update since November on that – while the number of missing has been a source of confusion.

At one stage, The Tribune was all set to publish a list of names of the missing on behalf of the Ministry of Social Services – a list that ran to 1,208 people, only for the government to pull it, and the National Security Minister to say the number of missing was 282 instead. There seemed no urgent drive to resolve the confusion – so we salute the efforts of Health Minister Dr Duane Sands to bring some resolution to the lingering uncertainty.

In today’s Tribune, Dr Sands calls for a decision to be made by multiple ministries to confirm that more than 200 people have died due to Hurricane Dorian.

That’s an immensely sad number to report – but we gain nothing by hiding from the truth. Such confirmation can bring closure to families, it can allow them to remember those they have lost and begin to move forward.

Dr Sands is also striving to ensure that those who are wary of coming forward to identify remains – in case they are detained by immigration, for example – can do so in safety, allowing the identification process to be completed rather than left hanging in the air because of a lack of trust.

Such efforts are to be applauded – but why is Dr Sands’ voice a lone one? He is taking leadership while other leaders stand idle. Where are the voices of the Minister of Social Services and the National Security Minister who once touted wildly differing numbers of missing? Where is the voice of Iram Lewis, minted by the government in the wake of the storm as the Minister of State for Disaster Preparedness, Management and Reconstruction? What was the point of his appointment if we rarely hear from him and even more rarely see the effects of his ministry? Where are the police reports confirming the totals of the dead, or the National Emergency Management Agency updates? Where indeed is the Prime Minister, Dr Hubert Minnis?

There are so many dead from the storm, and so few to speak for them.

The Attorney General, we are told, is considering a shortened time for the declaration of missing people as being dead for victims of the storm – but how long will there be consideration before there is action?

As Dr Sands points out, there are other issues to resolve – where the bodies that have not been identified will be buried, how long remains will be kept in refrigerated coolers before being interred, how remains will be referenced. We cannot help but think that some of those decisions ought to have been made by now – even if they have not been carried out as officials strive to identify the unknown dead.

So we encourage Dr Sands to keep striving to bring some resolution to the painful uncertainty that still hangs over our nation – and we would urge Dr Minnis to demand more of those departments from which we only hear silence.

Too little, too late

The rebuilding process after Hurricane Dorian seems to be another area where things are moving painfully slowly.

A storm victim speaks today in The Tribune about a lack of support from the government in Abaco, saying that a lot of help is coming from private foundations rather than the government.

The survivor, Edward Hoyte Jr, spoke particularly bitterly about the government spending $17m on drones rather than to rebuild people’s homes.

Even Algernon Cargill, the deputy chair of the disaster recovery board, who juggles that role with his post as director of aviation, seemed to recognise a problem with the deliveries of supplies, saying they “will be addressing this (issue) very quickly because we want to get Abaco back and running very, very quickly”. How quickly? Is four months on not enough to have an idea of what supplies are needed and to have them on hand by now?

Instead, he says they are having a series of meetings to find out exactly what is needed – which is necessary as part of an ongoing process, but feels like it is a couple of months later than it should be.

A great number of people are still struggling through the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian – and feeling very distant from the government that is promising to help them. That has to change – and the time for it to have changed is already overdue.