#TheBahamas, September 6, 2019 — Abaco residents who have managed to get off the island following monster Hurricane Dorian are outraged at news reports which they say give a watered-down view of what is actually happening in the decimated northern Bahama island.
“Stop letting people lie to y’all and look at things with y’all third eye ya know. Any man walking with sense could know, no 20 f***kin’ bodies in Abaco…. Even if they say 200 bodies, they damn lying.”
In the voice note we received early Friday morning, a young man expresses his outrage at the wrong information, that people are believing that information and the lack of urgency for Abaco’s people who are suffering a second storm.
“The media lying about the sh** bro, I just come from Abaco today… spread awareness about what happening over there buoy.”
He said his name is Uriel Simms and he encouraged use of that name in telling the story he characterizes as ‘the real truth’.
“I need everybody and dey Ma to send this voice note to every single person in Nassau. When I walk through the land in the eye of the storm, buoy people dead bodies was in the road like flies. They lying about the amount of dead people in Abaco.”
It is difficult to ignore such an impassioned plea for the ‘real story’ to be told and it is increasingly difficult to authenticate information from officials.
Magnetic Media has been enquiring of NEMA and Bahamas Information Services but has received nothing, so far.
Media reports both nationally and internationally are revealing the devastation, the heart-breaking stories of experiences during the storm, but four days on the cry is for practical help and that, Simms says is not coming.
“This a time to be hopping in ya friggin boat, hopping in one plane and flying ya ass to Abaco!”
Abaco needs all the help it can get said the civilian reporter who, in the two voice notes, focused largely on the death toll of the hurricane which pounded Abaco for two days – Sunday and Monday, this week.
Mr. Simms says he was told the morgue can hold 70 bodies; that capacity has long been surpassed, he said. Simms is certain that hundreds of deceased people are between the morgue and the clinic.
“…they over-jam that buoy. At least two thousand people dead in that storm. I walk in the back of Great Cestern to see my family bro. Bodies in the road like flies… you can see hands sticking out from under houses and t’ing where they get crush, buoy.”
Simms offered his understanding of the reported uprising of Haitians in Abaco; he said that story is also being told incorrectly.
“And it ain’t only no Haitians taking over, that’s only the portrayal the media like to give. It’s Haitians and Bahamians doing that sh*t over there. Buoy, that’s why the storm come, y’all too divided and t’ing buoy. Haitians supposed to be our black brothers and sister and y’all hatin’ on them. Try come together and lift one another up.”
The man said civilians managed to get guns out of the Ace Hardware store on Abaco island; he said there is looting.
“White people walking up and down by their business trying to protect it with guns willing to shoot people buoy.”
Simms labelled it, “…a mad, mad world in Abaco.” For the first time since Hurricane Dorian’s approach and hit in the northwest Bahamas, Prime Minister Hubert Minnis gave no national update. Government and NEMA were silent on Thursday; more focused, publicly anyway, on the delegation of Caribbean leaders which came for a tour of the devastation.
UPDATED: Government today announced the death toll is at 30 people lost in Hurricane Dorian.
