| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49602445 "Officials say hundreds, possibly thousands, are still missing in the Abacos and Grand Bahama. On Thursday Health Minister Duane Sands warned of a 'staggering' final count. 'The public needs to prepare for unimaginable information about the death toll and the human suffering,' he told local radio. Dr Ian Norton, who manages the World Health Organisation (WHO)'s emergency medical teams, also told reporters that he was also 'really worried' about the potential death toll." I don't know if they have a handle on how many there are that are missing. After the Camp Fire in 2018 in California, at one point I think there was over a thousand missing and while the actual death toll was significant, it was under 100. Hopefully if there are a lot of people that are officially missing, it's due to no communication. But it does concern me that the officials down there are talking that way. It's obvious that if the evacuation rate wasn't too high, it could be very significant. But I would imagine that everyone who stayed on the Abaco Islands would be considered missing until they know otherwise. If people couldn't afford to leave the impacted islands before the storm, that only left riding out at a shelter. But with the water so high, I don't know if there was much of anywhere that wasn't under water on the parts of the Abacos the storm went directly over. And the wind was strong enough that shelters could have failed. (at least one partly did, I don't know about others) I don't know how many shelters there were and what percentage failed. In the future there may have to be a better plan. I don't know what it could be though. Moving thousands, if not tens if thousands when also talking about Grand Bahama Island, doesn't seem like it would be feasible. I guess they will need to build schools, or some type of government buildings, really high up and built to have a chance at withstanding a category 5. I don't think evacuating everyone by plane is too feasible unless you had a really long lead time and even then that would take a massive effort that might not work. When they completely rebuild the Abacos, these are things they will have to think about. This was a storm where there wasn't a safe place for anyone that didn't have the opportunity to leave the impacted islands. |