By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net 

ABACO residents say they are not waiting for the government to issue evacuation plans for the 2020 hurricane season but are instead making their own plans if another storm were to hit the island. 

Speaking to The Tribune yesterday, island administrator for North and Central Abaco Terrece Bootle-Laing said this position appears to be the general consensus of most residents.

“Even in speaking with residents underground, that should Abaco be threatened by another hurricane especially given the magnitude of Dorian, they would voluntarily evacuate given that a lot of persons are still traumatised by the experiences of Dorian,” she said.

“Many families have that as their only option which is to leave the island and they have expressed that emphatically to us a number of times.”

Her comments come amid public concern over the island’s readiness for the 2020 hurricane season, which began early this month.

After Hurricane Dorian devastated Abaco and Grand Bahama in early September, the government evacuated over 3,000 people to New Providence for safety and shelter purposes.

Noting that many Abaco residents are still healing from the deadly storm, Mrs Bootle-Laing said she does not believe residents will wait on the government’s help to evacuate islands if another storm were to occur.

“I don’t think they would wait around for help for the government because even in adverse weather is still traumatic for them so they are still coping and trying to cope with the realities of their experiences in Dorian,” she told this newspaper.

Abaco resident Bishop Silbert Mills made similar comments to The Tribune, adding that he wouldn’t want his family to experience the harrowing ordeal ever again.

“I suspect that I will not be here in a storm,” he said. I don’t think I’ll stay here to put my family through it if there’s a storm traveling. It’s just one of those things that affects you psychologically. I don’t want to put my grandkids through that.

“I had my ten-month-old grandson in my house with the roof flying off. I had all of my family there with exception of my son and it’s only by the mercies of God that we are still alive and I don’t want to put them through that again.

“If a storm were coming to (the) island, we have a plan to leave the island. That’s personally my plan.”

Calls for a national evacuation plan have been stressed over the years after several natural disasters, but recently resurfaced after Hurricane Dorian ravaged the northwestern Bahamas last summer, flattening homes while displacing thousands. In the aftermath of the storm, the Minnis administration passed mandatory evacuation legislation. 

On Sunday, the National Emergency Management Agency singled out several communities for the government to consider implementing evacuation plans for the 2020 hurricane season. These include Central Abaco, Grand Bahama, Salina Point in Acklins and Spanish Wells in Eleuthera.

The agency revealed this in a list that identified hurricane shelters on islands throughout the country but excluded these four areas.

However, speaking on the matter yesterday, Mrs Bootle-Laing told The Tribune that as it relates to Central Abaco, officials have already eyed hurricane shelters in the storm ravaged community, including Central Abaco Primary School and Friendship Tabernacle Church.

She said: “We are working on, as it relates to hurricane shelters, is to continue to advance and progress in the repairs to those hurricane shelters that are not quite ready. We do have that as the case in Central Abaco where CAPS Primary School is at about 80 percent ready and we expect for that, this section that is deemed the shelter section, we expect for that to be ready within the month.

“We’ve added another shelter for Central Abaco and that is in the process of being verified as a shelter and that is Friendship Tabernacle so that is under assessment to be deemed an official shelter.

“And we also have in Green Turtle Cay where we are seeking to have another area verified and approved as a shelter and so we’re trying to progress and make as much progress as possible even though the season has commenced to have shelter areas ready.”

Asked about the evacuation plans for the island, the administrator said the decision would have to be made by the government.

She said: “When it comes to evacuation plans, Cabinet itself would have to make the call whether they will evacuate any particular group of persons from any of the cays or mainland Abaco and how they will facilitate the evacuations for example from the cays or by air into another island.”