Four months after Hurricane Dorian devastated parts of the northern Bahamas, the government’s new head of reconstruction says they need to speed up recovery efforts.
“One of the big priorities is this debris cleanup in Abaco,” says Katherine Smith, managing director of the Bahamas Disaster Reconstruction Authority during a bus tour Tuesday of parts of Great Abaco Island. “It’s really a big problem because of the scale of the hurricane and the damage it did in Abaco.”
Parts of Marsh Harbour remain without power. The Mudd and Pigeon Pea neighborhoods that took a direct hit from Dorian have been mostly cleared, and are barely recognizable as areas that were home to many, including Haitian immigrants.
Countless tons of debris remain across the island. Some of it piled neatly along side main roads waiting to be picked up. Some of it still strewn across properties, likely untouched since the category five storm sat on top of this island for more than a day in early September.
While some rebuilding efforts can be seen, Smith knows the debris stands in the way of recovery. “Within the next thee months I think we want to see appreciable change in the way Marsh Harbour looks or areas still left undone in Grand Bahama,” she said. Cleaning up the forests of pine trees, bent or snapped by Dorian’s 200-plus mile an hour wind gusts, will take much longer. “We really have to be more aggressive on the clean up.”
Smith’s agency was created late last year and charged with several goals, among them: assessing and regulating the reconstruction effort. She’s reviewing debris clean-up contracts handed out immediately after the storm.
Smith expects the current damage estimate of $3.4 billion dollars to climb. Next week, the Bahamian government is holding a conference in Nassau hoping to attract private donations to help in the rebuilding effort.
