This is true, but does not make it any more right.... :o/
There shouldn't be a City vs. Country attitude. It's not like we have millions of people to lose in preventable tragedies. That thing about "all o' we is one family" is still remarkably true, despite the fact that many Nassuvians have left their "country / island" roots behind them.

Also FYI, this runway was originally built during WW2, and at one time was the longest in the Bahamas. It was not maintained after the US base there closed, but there were lights from that era still on the runway. Unfortunately the current upgrading activity, which is supposed to re-open the full length of the runway, will come too late to save these three residents' lives...

If we want to talk about "wasted" spending, let's talk about cost overruns on road improvement projects on New Providence under the last government [to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars] while improvement projects for Family Islands were scrapped or back-burnered. There is an unfortunate attitude amongst Nassuvians that Nassau "is" The Bahamas, at least when it comes to spending.

Just fyi... the original project to re-light this particular runway, along with numerous other airport improvement projects, was stopped under the previous government [i.e. Hubert Ingraham's FNM]. The current government had just restarted the project.

Isn't this the runway that was supposed to have been upgraded 6 years ago in a project that was scrapped by the government after the 2007 election? IIRC, it's one of the longest runways in the country, but much of it is no longer usable.

I have also heard that one or more of the people killed are relatives of Sidney Collie and V. Alfred Grey. That would not be surprising given the small size of the community there.

My condolences to the families. This is a real tragedy.