#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.