By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

A WEEK after receiving her commitment letter for a brand-new home, Dorian survivor Lovely McIntosh says she is still in disbelief and overwhelmed with joy that she will finally have a place to call her own.

Ms McIntosh, pictured with Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis and Minister of Transport and Housing JoBeth Coleby-Davis, was one of several Abaco residents who recently received housing assistance from the government after having resided in the government domes for some two years.

She recalled living in a dome without running water or electricity before her luck turned around.

“The government did wonderful for me,” she said in an emotional interview with The Tribune yesterday. “They gave me a new home and it’s still in the process of finishing off and that’s all I could say because I wasn’t expecting it.”

“I went through a period of struggle. When I came back, I didn’t know where I was going to live.”

“I didn’t know where I was going to rest my head. I didn’t even know where I was going to stay – but thank God.”

Having lost everything to the storm in 2019, the Abaco resident said trying to return her life to some normalcy has not been easy.

 Speaking on the challenges she faced post Dorian, the survivor detailed her struggle to find shelter and a place to live after her return to the island following the storm’s passage.

 “I was renting before the storm and lost everything there and when I came back, they told me that I couldn’t get no dome and no trailer and my brother who is deceased now, he said his house was full and I said Lord, where am I going to find to live?

 “I was even crying with my suitcase that day because I didn’t know where I was going and my aunty told me to why not go in the domes that was not finished and  when I went to one dome, the people cursed me out and treat me so bad so I came out of that dome.

 “And I went to another and it kept shaking and I was wondering if someone been in it. When I opened the door, it was dirty and not finished so I said ‘Lord, you want me to go in this?’ because I didn’t have no key for that door and then I found the key and checked the door and stayed in the dome with no light and water for two years.”

 Ms Mcintosh described her living conditions in the dome as “rough,” citing structural issues.

 However, she said her situation did not stop her from having faith that things would get better for her and her family soon.

 “When they said we had to move out of the domes, I said ‘Lord when am I going’ because I have no place to live and I have no family member to turn to and nobody to go to. I had me and my granddaughter and my great grand who is nine-months-old and I said ‘where are we going?’”

 Weeks later, Ms Mcintosh got her answer.

 “One of the guys who we was in the meeting when they said ‘I have two trailers that are supposed to be empty and you can get one’,” she added, “and in no minutes time, the lady said she was moving out of the trailers and she said if anyone need a trailer she can get that and it was like victory when I saw light, running water, fridge and I saw two beds to sleep in. I said God this is my time to shine, from the dome to the trailer.”

 But unbeknownst to the Dorian survivor, there was more good news to come.

 “(Last week) they called and they come to my job looking for me and I didn’t know nothing because I filled out a housing application and they told me to bring a job letter and that was almost a year and that was it,” she said.

 “I heard nothing else (since then), but when they called me to meet them by the groundbreaking where they do the house at 1.45 and I reached there and the lady said ‘surprise, surprise’, you get a home and I said ‘I get a home’ and I said ‘Jesus, this got to be a joke’ and this can’t be real.”

 Hurricane Dorian hit Abaco on September 1, 2019 as a Category 5 hurricane before barreling toward Grand Bahama.

 The storm left thousands of homes either destroyed or damaged and hundreds of residents displaced.

 To assist with rebuilding efforts, the Minnis administration spent more than $6m on nearly 200 domes that were supposed to be used as temporary housing for Abaco and Grand Bahama residents after Hurricane Dorian.

 A good number of those structures were placed in the Spring City community, but most of the dome residents have since relocated elsewhere after the government announced its intentions to have the domes demolished.

 “The majority of the dome occupants have received their $4,000 stipend already,” said Disaster Reconstruction Authority chairman Alex Storr.

 “Some of those persons have used the funds to make repairs to their homes and now are back in their own houses. Others have found alternative housing solutions. The remaining persons are in the process of moving now.”