![Paradise Lost](https://image.pbs.org/video-assets/yRilWlR-asset-mezzanine-16x9-yzMAsci.jpg?format=webp&resize=1440x810)
![When Disaster Strikes](https://image.pbs.org/contentchannels/cGmJF9J-white-logo-41-VRaBPF5.png?format=webp&resize=200x)
Paradise Lost
Episode 3 | 55m 15sVideo has Audio Description, Closed Captions
See a tale of survival as one of the Caribbean’s strongest hurricanes strikes The Bahamas.
Hear an epic tale of survival as one of the Caribbean’s strongest hurricanes strikes The Bahamas. The government and international aid workers battle to meet the survivors’ basic needs in the chaos of the aftermath.
See all videos with Audio DescriptionAD![When Disaster Strikes](https://image.pbs.org/contentchannels/cGmJF9J-white-logo-41-VRaBPF5.png?format=webp&resize=200x)
Paradise Lost
Episode 3 | 55m 15sVideo has Audio Description, Closed Captions
Hear an epic tale of survival as one of the Caribbean’s strongest hurricanes strikes The Bahamas. The government and international aid workers battle to meet the survivors’ basic needs in the chaos of the aftermath.
See all videos with Audio DescriptionADHow to Watch When Disaster Strikes
When Disaster Strikes is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
Buy Now
Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship-Our warming planet is triggering more extreme weather with cataclysmic consequences.
A worldwide rise in natural disasters.
-Today, we are seeing many more people incredibly vulnerable.
Each disaster that puts people in such dire straits is getting worse, it's getting more complex, it's getting wider spread.
Countries are overwhelmed.
-When disaster strikes anywhere in a the world, a coordinated international operation swings into action.
-You have emergency telecommunications.
Here you have the air ops.
-Bringing order to chaos.
Hope from despair.
This series follows the mechanics of disaster relief from the inside.
-In any emergency there are four critical clusters -- health, food, WASH, and shelter.
-Specialist relief workers team up with local people on the ground.
-[ Speaking native language ] I'm working, but my heart is very sick because I don't like to see my people at this time.
-Can survivors recover before disaster strikes again?
-It will be years before we get this done, but we're all here together working hand in hand.
-And how will the world cope with more frequent and ferocious disasters?
-We learn lessons and we built on it.
It's a global phenomenon.
No one is immune from this.
-In 2019, The Bahamas was ravaged by one of the strongest hurricanes to ever hit the Caribbean.
-The whole roof came off.
Me and my baby.
My baby's only four months old.
Please pray for us.
-There was a race to support survivors.
-Speed matters in disasters.
-Without this hospital, they would have really nowhere to go.
-And amid the carnage and trauma... -I have to just try every day to keep myself from falling apart.
-...a realization that this is the new normal.
-And I think it's going to get worse.
♪♪ -♪ Dig my grave so long and narrow ♪ ♪ Make my coffin... ♪ -No country, however rich or poor, is immune to natural disasters.
-♪ Dig my grave... ♪ -Some nations are hit more than others.
One such place is the Bahamas, where the unpredictable climate is challenging their defenses.
-We like to think of ourselves as hurricane experts.
We really thought that we knew how they would happen.
-♪ ...carry me ♪ -But we are in a whole new ballgame.
-The Bahamas is made up of over 700 islands off the southeast coast of Florida.
Bahamians grow up learning to live with the annual hurricane season.
♪♪ But, in August 2019, one of the world's most powerful storms started building in the Atlantic.
It was christened Dorian.
-I doubt that there'll be any child in the history the Bahamas named Dorian ever again, because what we experienced is nothing short of apocalyptic.
♪♪ -As with any potential hurricane, the Bahamian government tracked its course.
-To watch this thing blossom from a Category Three to Category Four and, once you start dealing with a Category Five storm...
It was, "Oh, Lord, what are we in for?"
It became pretty clear that this was going to hit Abaco and Grand Bahama.
-Abaco and Grand Bahama are two of the biggest and most populated islands.
The government warned the residents to evacuate.
Those who could flew to the capital on New Providence island but many remained behind.
-This is probably the worst day of my life to address the Bahamian people.
We're facing a hurricane, one that we've never seen in the history of the Bahamas.
Many have remained behind.
I can only say to them, that I hope that this is not the last time that they will hear my voice, and may God be with them.
♪♪ -Dorian hit Abaco with 185-mile-an-hour winds and a 20-foot storm surge.
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -We're standing right here.
Please.
The whole roof came off.
My baby's only four months old.
Please pray for us.
Please pray for us.
-The awe of the strength of nature... -Swim!
Swim!
Swim!
Swim!
-She's doing it.
-Swim!
-And then the realization that this was unlike anything we've ever seen before.
♪♪ Grand Bahama had an even worse experience because Dorian was going at eight miles an hour, then six, then five, then four, and then it stopped.
♪♪ The ocean came in 15 feet, 20 feet.
♪♪ It's a visceral response that you have to have.
-I'm on the inside on my second floor, and this is what the water looks like outside.
It is now approximately 12 feet high.
God save us all.
We're gonna live through this.
Okay, this is what it looks like now.
My last option now is to get up into this manhole I created upstairs.
We will survive.
We will survive.
We'll make it.
-You're getting these phone calls.
"The water's rising, the water's rising.
Please come get us."
-I'm just praying to God that it don't rise much further, and they'll be here before anything happens.
-The heartbreak, the grief associated with this particular storm is unique.
♪♪ -After 36 hours, Hurricane Dorian finally moved away from Grand Bahama.
It left over half the island, including its capital Freeport, under water.
With the tail of the storm still lashing, it was impossible for emergency relief teams to get in.
It was up to the survivors to become first responders.
-Alright come on, come on.
Let's go.
Wow.
♪♪ -The government will bring to bear every resource of state possible to help the people of Abaco and Grand Bahama.
Our priority at this time is search, rescue and recovery.
-The government was coordinating its operations out of Nassau on New Providence, but 100 miles of ocean lies between the capital and the devastated islands.
The Bahamas' limited military resources couldn't cope with the sheer scale of the search and rescue operation.
They requested urgent help from other governments, who in the first week, deployed helicopters, landing craft, and four hybrid, vertical-take-off Ospreys.
♪♪ -We relied very heavily on the military from Great Britain, from the Dutch, and particularly, the Americans, who ran sortie after sortie, going in and evacuating the most seriously injured.
We had no idea how many people had died, but very early on, the numbers of missing people was in the thousands.
-As well as searching for survivors, they were using the aircraft to assess the situation on the ground.
-My first time seeing the devastation was in a U.S. Coast Guard chopper.
I accompanied the Prime Minister.
We flew over Abaco because it still wasn't safe to land, and the utter devastation was surreal.
You see these shipping containers everywhere.
It's difficult to understand how they could have been moved.
In Abaco, it was primarily wind damage.
♪♪ In Grand Bahama, I think the bigger problem was flood damage.
♪♪ -To make matters worse, Dorian's devastating force had left these islands with no power, no running water, and no telecommunications.
Debris and flooding had severed the road network, and crippled the main airports on both islands.
-There were some serious logistical issues bought by Dorian that made formulating our response even more challenging.
-On top of military help, the government approached humanitarian aid agencies to deal with the second phase of the response -- supporting survivors.
-We realized that we had to deal with the basic needs of people -- to have food, water, shelter, and to provide healthcare.
In the week after Dorian, it was just a tremendous coordination of literally hundreds of offers for aid.
-More than a hundred different organizations deployed teams from all over the world, including specialist United Nations coordinators.
-I had a team that deployed immediately to help the government, to put some order to the chaos.
Coordination actually helps to do that.
We will set up a system, and we set it up by areas of expertise.
Coordination uses each of those skill sets to the maximum capacity to make sure that each of us are using our experience and skills to reach the most people.
-Within days, "WASH" agencies were flying fresh drinking water to both islands.
Shelter agencies distributed tents and tarps.
And health agencies flew in drugs, equipment, and personnel to set up temporary clinics.
-That period was crazy.
And then it just continued the next day and the next day and the next day.
So, here we are.
It's almost six weeks later, and now the real work begins.
♪♪ -The emergency life-saving phase of the operation is now over.
The government must assess the extent of the damage and start rebuilding lives and infrastructure.
-We estimate that Hurricane Dorian would have been a $6 to $7 billion impact.
When you look at the devastation, there's not a single area that hasn't been impacted.
Schools impacted, businesses impacted, agriculture.
The agricultural crop for 2019, gone.
We could go ministry by ministry and it's the same story.
-The first step on the road to recovery is to remove the vast amounts of debris left in Dorian's wake.
Samaritan's Purse, a Christian organization based in North Carolina, is working with the government to clear some of the worst-hit areas.
♪♪ -On Abaco, Dorian came across the most populated part of the island, and that's why you're seeing massive piles of rubble where the wind came and knocked down entire homes.
In terms of the response, it means that Abaco, because of the amount of debris created by that wind damage, the first step is removing all of the debris.
How do we clear the debris out so people can actually come back and start getting schools and power and water?
You start with the debris.
-One of Nick's teams is starting to clear a small cay five miles off the main island.
♪♪ It can only be accessed by boat or helicopter, which makes the logistics even more challenging.
-This is where we've started our debris removal, where the heavy machinery came on barges just last week, and we're already moving material out to the port and then off the island.
-There's so much debris to be removed on such small roads, they've had to ship in specialist vehicles.
-We're having to use dump trucks like this in order to move the debris to the port.
These are made for work in mines, and so we were able to use those for situations like this where it's very narrow roads that we can then move the debris out.
They'll fill up pretty quickly, so one goes out, another one comes in.
It's just the nature of it being on such a small island.
Plans are still being developed right now, a month and a half into the recovery process, as to how all of this massive amount of debris will be cleared up.
These guys will be at work for several months even just here on Man-O-War.
♪♪ -In Abaco, what's bizarre is that you can picture where a house or building used to be, and now what's left is just a pile of rubble.
But in order to restore Abaco and Grand Bahama, people need a place to live.
♪♪ ♪♪ -That's my apartment down there.
It doesn't look the same.
It doesn't look like home.
It doesn't look nothing like home.
It's just so... [ Sobs ] [ Sniffles ] [ Sobbing ] Just imagine, like, everyone standing right here, about 25 of us.
Like, you ca-- I was fine with me dying that day.
I was actually fine with me, but I have a four-month-old baby.
Not him.
Not seeing him dying with me.
I wasn't okay with that.
♪♪ Afterwards, they put us on a plane and they took us to the Nassau, and when we got to Nassau, we was in a shelter.
And the shelter was overcrowded with everyone.
♪♪ It was a lot to deal with, especially with a baby in your hand.
♪♪ -Gertha and her son, Jayden, are one of the many families who left Abaco and Grand Bahama to seek shelter in the capital.
The government has taken over municipal buildings across Nassau to house the homeless.
-The shelters provided another challenge because you had between 1,500, 2,000 or even more in a number of shelters.
Many of these are gymnasia, they are churches, they are community centers, and they were never intended for people to be there long term.
♪♪ -On Grand Bahama, some of the evacuees are now beginning to return, six weeks after the hurricane.
Many of the houses here are still standing, but they need to be gutted and cleaned and their roofs sealed.
Today, the Red Cross is giving out tarps and clean-up kits to support returning families.
-Yes, we need two tarps in each kit.
One pack of water, and it's two tarps.
-There's a -- what we call a clean up kit in there, so we have things like bleach and mops and gloves.
Yeah, yeah.
The need here is really centered around mold, mildew, physical clean up of what's left of their homes, because sometimes the structures are still standing.
Things like a clean-up kit can help in this short-term process to get people back home.
-Do you have a number for her?
-Two?
-Right now, we are mostly in the recovery phase.
It's a frustrating phase for families.
-It's okay.
You'll be fine.
-The Red Cross' job, first and foremost, is to help bridge that gap between those immediate needs and what lies ahead in the road to recovery.
♪♪ -These kits will help the people of this community to make their homes watertight and clear the potentially hazardous black mold.
But the flooding also decimated the main healthcare facility on Grand Bahama -- the Rand Memorial Hospital.
-In the hospital, we had so much black water, meaning sewage and water and mold.
It destroyed the intensive care unit, the operating room, the wards, and a tremendous amount of equipment.
The human capacity and the infrastructural capacity to deliver health care was also wiped out.
♪♪ -Aid agencies have been working alongside the local health authorities to run clinics across the two islands.
The biggest facility is in Freeport on Grand Bahama.
The camp is across the road from the Rand Memorial Hospital.
♪♪ -Samaritan's Purse basically created an entire hospital in the field in order to provide health services.
-What's her name?
Vera?
-Yeah, Viola.
-Viola.
-Viola, Barry.
-Viola.
You're okay, okay?
You're okay.
She is skin and bones.
Near the beginning, we were seeing a lot of wounds from the hurricane, head injuries, lacerations, a lot of skin infections because people were wading in deep water.
Since then, we're seeing just a lot of chronic things, all the things that we would normally see at a normal emergency room.
Are you okay?
-Much better.
-Are you much better?
-Mm-hmm.
-Okay, let me get you a new bag, though.
We're seeing from 150 to 160 patients a day.
Without this hospital, they would have really nowhere to go.
In hurricanes and earthquakes, usually almost everything's down.
So, we don't assume we're gonna have communication, electricity, or water, so we come with all of that.
That's that generator.
That's important.
This is gas for the generator, also important.
This is our central supply.
Chest tubes, IVs, catheters, all of the operation equipment.
Everything that we need to run a hospital is kept in here.
It's very organized.
Without this, we can't do that over there.
This is the emergency room area.
Through there is our operating room.
Currently, they're in doing a surgery right now.
-This facility has all the different departments you'd expect to find in any hospital.
There's triage, the ER, and a pharmacy, intensive care linked to the operating room, separate tents for the wards, and a storage area.
There's also staff accommodation, so this whole complex can be completely self-sufficient.
-Since they started in just over 30 days, they've seen almost 4,000 patients.
They've done more than 70 operative procedures.
We will continue to use the field hospital for up to six months as we restore the Rand to a working facility.
-The floodwater that did so much damage to the Rand Memorial Hospital is now in danger of causing a new health hazard.
Pools of stagnant floodwater are perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
-With all the carnage, mosquito populations increased.
So imagine, heaven forbid, we wind up with a Dengue or a Chikungunya, or some-- or malaria outbreak because mosquito populations are out of control.
As part of the health response, we have to aggressively attack the larvae and adults with the appropriate interventions.
♪♪ -Even -- Don.
Even the car, over here, it's holding water.
-Yeah.
-Everything is a breeding source.
Even cars.
There we go.
-The Pan American Health Organization is supporting the local authorities as they try to avoid a potentially deadly outbreak.
-To the average person, this is just trash, garbage, but to me, this is just mosquito breeding city.
My eyes just always go to containers, rain barrel, sink, tub.
So, this is just like a cooking pot.
I mean, every bit helps.
People are starting to come back to these areas.
So we just want to try to handle this public health issue as quickly as possible, or there'd be a lot of sickness and there'd be potential deaths because these diseases are serious diseases.
We just need to figure out where are the risk zones, where are the hot spots.
We're going to go ahead and set another trap.
-You want the same area?
-Yeah, let's put it in the same area.
-The team sets new traps every day to monitor the different types of mosquito and check the population growth.
-This is called a lure.
It actually smells quite bad, but this attracts the mosquitoes.
So, I'm curious to see what we caught in last night's trap.
Guys, how's it looking?
Uh-oh.
I think I do see somebody.
We have two aedes, which is the vector for Zika, Chikungunya, Dengue.
You can kind of see it moving around.
This is a bit worrisome because two and a half weeks ago, this trap caught nothing.
-This is not good news.
-The fear of infectious disease and the total loss of shelter and infrastructure mean many people are reluctant to return.
♪♪ Some families are even sending their children abroad.
-It's not right for us to have the baby here with us, to have Jayden with us.
This is his birth certificate, so just take this.
-That's how the birth certificate look?
-No, this is it.
We don't have a place to stay.
There's no doctor.
There's no clean water.
There's a lot of mosquitoes.
Hey, Pappy.
-See, I'm ready to go in.
-She have to go in now.
Okay.
The fact that we're starting to have mosquitoes, we're just scared for mosquitoes to get to him.
I love you, Pappy.
Bye, Pappy.
So, we made a decision to send him to Fort Lauderdale... ...to be with my husband's family, and my sister.
♪♪ -Gertha is one of the thousands of people who are homeless and in limbo in the capital.
The Bahamas is an expensive place to live, and many displaced families are struggling to support themselves.
The Red Cross has started distributing financial aid to them while they look for new homes and new jobs over the next few months.
-Thank you very much.
-All of the families walking through the doors today are ones that we have identified as the most vulnerable.
They are starting from the ground up.
They're having to think about getting new jobs in some cases.
Many of them have been staying with friends, family, host families, and some are even still in shelters run by the government.
This is an example of one of the cards that we give the families coming through, and essentially, it acts just like a credit or debit card would.
-Each family receives over $3,000 in three separate instalments.
-Based on our analysis of the local market, the funds that they're receiving today is roughly enough for three months worth of the basic needs, when you think about what it costs for rent, how much you spend on food, utility bills, transportation.
We have found that the financial assistance programme is actually one of the most efficient ways to get relief to people in need the quickest.
It gives families the freedom to spend the funds on what they actually need, and then that gets people back on their feet, up and running faster.
Yeah, that's important, so -- Hey, thank you.
It's something that we have done in past disasters with the Red Cross, and something that we definitely are going to be using in the future.
-The humanitarian system is far more efficient today than it was 50 years ago.
I have no doubt about that.
But we need to keep going.
We need to keep up with the times to make sure that with all the challenges we're facing, we're innovating all the time to get lives back to normal as quickly as possible.
-The next key phase in the recovery is to resurrect local businesses so people can earn a living.
-Often, what you see in the media is the immediate aftershock of where people need to have the shelter, the water, food, but actually, the greatest impact is on people's livelihoods.
But if people don't have jobs and a way and a means to continue to feed their families, then we will see longer term impacts.
♪♪ -Four months after the hurricane, restoring livelihoods is now one of the top priorities in the recovery.
Like many island nations, tens of thousands of Bahamians rely on fishing for their main source of income.
-♪ Jump in the line, rock your body on time ♪ ♪ Jump in the line, rock your body on time ♪ -So, aid agencies are supporting the fishermen as they rebuild the local industry.
♪♪ -All of the boats has been damaged from the storm.
Come look at this bad boy over here.
You see the kind of condition it's in?
You see all of this stuff here?
We're going to have to fix all of this.
See all of this?
So, we've got a lot work.
So, we're bringing them three at a time, and sending them out three at a time.
As fast as three goes, three comes in.
Okay?
So, we're going to get it together.
We've been sanding the boats, repairing the boats.
Then we are painting the boats up and getting them back in good working condition.
This is Leroy.
This is one of my guy here.
Say hi to the camera, Leroy.
This is one of my main man over here.
-How you doing?
-We've got a lot of material.
This is where we keep all our material over here in the tent.
That was sponsored by Global Med.
You come in here.
You can see all of this stuff here.
This well over $10,000 worth of materials.
Give a thumbs up to those guys, man.
Yeah.
This is like the -- This is the heartbeat of the community right now.
Everybody comes here for everything.
Fishing is their livelihood.
That's what they do for a living.
That's what they feed their family with, okay?
So, this project here is very important to this community.
Once the boats come out, fishermen can get back to work to start making some money to put in their pocket.
♪♪ -Aid agencies are also beginning to create jobs on Abaco.
-So, just head straight into there.
-The UN's Development Program is paying people who've returned to the island to repair the main elementary school.
-Okay.
Alright, so we'll begin.
Ourselves, including me, being from here, this is really important to see that we get everybody back up and running as soon as possible.
And, as we know, we want to bring our kids home as well, so this is a really important first step.
This is a cash for work program, which is a way to hire as many people as possible to get the economy back up and running.
As income is coming in, then they're also going to the grocery store and they're buying food.
We have some hardware stores that have opened.
-Yeah.
-[ Laughs ] -Just like that.
Just like that.
Just like that.
-It's been hard because so many people were evacuated, but now we're seeing a really large increase of people starting to come back home.
The more people we can bring home, the faster we're going to rehabilitate.
♪♪ -Repairing all the schools damaged by the hurricane is a mammoth task.
♪♪ This is the next vital step to encourage more families to return, which will further boost the local economy.
-Throw it over the side.
-[ Speaking native language ] It's great when you're doing something to help your community.
Some of the folks you see here, some of them are from Abaco, some of them are from other places in the Bahamas, and then you have some of the Haitians that are here from Haiti.
They're all here together working hand in hand to try to help us with the community, which is a great thing.
It's a lot of debris we need to move.
It's not that it's a little bit here.
It's all over the island.
-Pastor Bain is helping to clear the vast amounts of debris in this massive logistics exercise.
-This is a new dump site that they made after the old dump site is full.
Go ahead.
♪♪ -Up to 200 truckloads a day arrive at this site alone.
♪♪ This is the largest clean-up operation in the history of the Bahamas.
The government needs to hire almost a thousand people to process the debris and bring it to 20 acres of new landfill sites.
This means more jobs for islanders recovering from the traumatic memories of the hurricane.
♪♪ -We all has a different story to tell.
I am thankful.
The reason why I'm thankful -- because my work on Earth is not finished yet.
You know, there are many folks that have passed and gone on in that storm.
I and my wife and another pastor were in the church, which is called Miracle Revival Fellowship, and that church fall on us.
♪♪ ♪♪ And the wind pick up so rough, you could hear it like a train were coming where it was so forceful.
I hear this clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, and I got out and got to this door here and I look right over here in the corner.
Right over here in the corner.
This roof started doing this.
So, I said to my wife and Pastor Cunningham, I say, "Now we've got to get out of here."
As I opened this door here, that's when the whole of this building [Laughs] came at us, came at us, and my wife was in this area right here.
So, she was in that pile of rubble there.
[ Laughs ] So it just took us 45 minutes to find out where she was because she probably was knocked out from the debris.
We heard a holler, and because of her hollering and we were standing right there, we were able to rush right in, just move the debris and get her, and we was able to take her to the clinic.
We moved all the rubbish this week.
So, now we're standing here just looking at the foundation.
And I'm quite sure that there are people out there that is going to be able to help us so that we can rebuild our sanctuary back.
-By clearing the debris from the foundations, Pastor Bain has taken his first steps towards rebuilding his church.
The power network is slowly being repaired, and most of the roads are now clear.
The government is trying to provide safe, temporary shelter on Abaco, to encourage more people to return.
But the future is precarious, with the next hurricane season just a few months away.
-So what kind of shelters do you place in a hurricane-prone environment?
Some people would say, "Well, roll the dice and go with lightweight, easy to set up tents."
♪♪ Fine, but are you absolutely certain that you can rebuild homes before hurricane season starts again?
-The government has spent $2 million on RVs and over $6 million on domes that can withstand winds of up to 180 miles an hour.
Early occupants have complained that the domes overheat in the day and are cold at night.
With little scope for modification and use in the future, some consider them a waste of money.
-There are no perfect answers here.
You have to make the best decision given incomplete information.
We're going to add to that a whole lot of hoping and praying that we are freed from another Dorian weather system.
God forbid.
♪♪ -With the inescapable threat of another big hurricane, many evacuees feel too scared to return to their islands, so they've decided to stay in the capital.
Gertha has been reunited with her son, Jayden, after his stay in Florida.
He's now eight months old.
-We decided to get Jayden back because I was depressed.
I'm just so happy to wake up every morning to see his face.
♪♪ [ Sighs ] This is my room.
We -- As you can see, there is no bed for him.
He sleep in the bed with me.
We lost everything during the hurricane.
♪♪ He had everything.
He had his baby crib, he has toys.
And now... ...we have to start over with nothing.
Mm.
It is a small room, but... ...it could do for now.
My husband, China, is in Abaco.
He's working.
He's coming back and forth.
-Hello.
-Hey.
-Hey, buddy.
Y'all miss me?
-He just hoping that everything could get back to track so we could go back home.
-Hey.
-You want to go Abaco with me?
-Really?
You want to go Abaco?
Where you going to sleep?
He want to go back.
He want to live in Abaco.
I don't want to live in Abaco.
I'm sorry.
After what I've done been through, I don't see a future there for me anymore.
-One of the big challenges that we have now is the psychological impact.
You had 70,000, 75,000 people directly impacted by the storm, but then you also have another 325,000 people that were witnesses to this and so many of us are at risk for PTSD.
For instance, doctors, nurses, many of our staff members had lost loved ones.
Would have lost their homes and all their possessions.
-I'm a nurse employed by the Grand Bahama Health Services.
I worked during the hurricane.
♪♪ You know, not in my wildest dreams did I imagine coming home to this.
You know, it's just like in the blink of the eye, you lose everything.
Yeah, I have to just try every day to keep myself from falling apart.
I just wake up every day and I ask God to give me the strength to deal with this day, you know, to take me through it.
Walk me through that day and not let me fall apart.
Oh, this is my nurse's cap.
Mm.
I don't know.
How do you go from this?
How do you pick up the pieces and move on from all of this?
You know, it's really hard because you don't know where to start from.
People say it's just things.
Yeah, it's just things, and people say you could get it back, but there's some things you can't replace, you know, like, all of my own children album, the baby albums -- all of those things gone.
My dog, we believe she's dead.
She probably thought I didn't love anymore.
I leave her in the house to perish, so...
It's a lot of stress.
I had to take time off from work because there was no way I was able to work mentally nor physically.
♪♪ If it wasn't for Samaritan's Purse, we probably wouldn't have jobs.
-Four months after Hurricane Dorian, most departments in the main hospital on Grand Bahama are still operating from the camp.
But now, local staff are running all the clinics.
-Sometimes it's good to come to work because it's a nice getaway.
And if I'm busy, I don't have to think a lot.
Still, there are times when I don't want to get out of bed, but I have to.
I have to get up and get started and life goes on.
-Across the road, repair work on the Rand Memorial Hospital is progressing well... ...and sections are beginning to re-open.
But Dorian exposed the vulnerability of these 50-year-old buildings.
-The devastation has forced me to understand that now we have to quickly plan the facility of the future.
It should be weather resilient.
It should be on high ground.
It should be able to withstand incredible winds, but, you know, how do you engineer something to withstand 200-mile-an-hour winds?
I don't think the engineers or the architects know how to design that building in a way that anybody can afford it.
-We're in a climate crisis.
It's a global phenomenon.
No one is immune from this.
And if we don't find a way to work with this, it will have massive, massive impacts on our children.
♪♪ -Now more than ever... ...there is a huge need for effective leadership.
This is a new normal now.
If anyone had any doubt about climate change... ...if anyone had any doubt about the ferocity of these tropical cyclones... ...you can have no doubt anymore.
It's a very poignant message about the response of nature to what we have done.
♪♪ And I think it's going to get worse.
-If there's ever a time for the world to come together, it's around climate change.
It's not too late, but we're getting close, and so we have to act now.
Each of us have an ability to contribute in a very meaningful way.
We need to step up together on this one.
-♪ Oh, 'pend on me, I'll 'pend on you ♪ ♪ Faithful servant, I want to be ♪ ♪ Oh, 'pend on me, Lord, I'll 'pend on you ♪ ♪ Now, well, faithful servant, I'll be close to thee ♪ -We spend $3,000 for some red chairs that we had on both sides, and we just got those chairs, but they all gone.
But God is a good God.
He will give us better chairs.
I'm quite sure that he will.
-♪ But you can depend on me ♪ -We've got to try to pull together as a country to get over this.
You know, everybody got to depend on everybody.
That's what it's all about.
It's better in the Bahamas.
Born and grow here.
It'll take more than Dorian to make me leave.
You know what I'm saying?
This is home.
-♪ But you can depend on me ♪ -♪ Ooh, ooh ♪ -"When Disaster Strikes" is available on Amazon Prime Video.
♪♪ ♪♪
The Aftermath of Dorian and the Resulting Health Hazards
Video has Closed Captions
Duane Sands explains how Dorian could produce health hazards long after it has passed. (2m 46s)
Creating Jobs on the Island Abaco
Video has Closed Captions
Jobs are created on Abaco, one of the islands worst-affected by Hurricane Dorian. (2m 51s)
Episode 3 Preview | Paradise Lost
Video has Closed Captions
See a tale of survival as one of the Caribbean’s strongest hurricanes strikes The Bahamas. (30s)
The Grand Bahama's Mobile, Inflatable Hospital Complex
Video has Closed Captions
Since Dorian, the island of Grand Bahama relies on a mobile, inflatable hospital complex. (2m 57s)
A Local Fisherman Works to Restore Damaged Boats
Video has Closed Captions
After Dorian damages their boats, fishers are left unable to ply their trade. (1m 58s)
Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship