Messages From The Bahamas

...Continued from  9/9/2019:
        I just received a brief phone call from my daughter Claire, a disaster response nurse who spent the past week in the Bahamas with the International Medical Corps with the mission of providing medical care for the victims of Hurricane Dorian (see post from 9/9/2019, "Strike Nurse").

     Claire has arrived back at the Miami, Florida airport and will soon be en route home to Chicago.     
       We had only a few minutes to talk before she boarded her plane and so she couldn't much fill me in other than to let me know that she was safe and well and back in the States.
     While she was on Grand Bahama, where she spent most of the week,  Claire had found only one spot where internet and/or phone service was occasionally up. Therefore her communications from the island - mostly via Facebook messaging - were few and brief.
      But I'll share here her messages such as they were and pictures she posted over the week:
    
      Sunday, September 8
      Landed in Grand Bahamas safely! More to come as assessment continues!

      Monday, September 9
      Hi all, I am home from being out in the east end of Grand Bahamas today. This is by far the worst cane I have ever seen.

     What’s left of a house

       We were sent to assist this clinic but there is nothing left.

     Oil spill, it’s everywhere.

      Tuesday, September 11
     Hi all, just a quick update...yesterday and today we went door to door in the High Rock area checking up on people, providing medical care as needed and doing an assessment of the damage to the area. It has been unbelievable, the destruction. 

     Me going house to house.

      Tomorrow we have procured a 4 wheel drive vehicle to make it out further east. In the other truck we had we couldn’t get past the oil spill. We hope to get to the community of McLean, which is on the Far East of the island. Overall I am tired but well, had a bucket shower and then the electricity came on, hooray!
      We have about 12 volunteers here now, doctors and nurses, plus 6 logisticals. So a big crew. (We are using swimming pool water to flush the toilets because there are 16 of us in the same house with no running water. So we are taking turns hauling water, too.) I’m hoping with the return of the electricity in the neighborhood the water will follow. (Not out east though, those power lines will be down for months I’m sure.)

      On Wednesday evening, September 11,  I received a text from Claire that her team had spent the day in McLean's Town, a town on the far eastern end of the island that had been badly hit by Dorian.
     I had seen pictures of McLean's Town on the news.
     Apparently it is - was - a beach resort town.
    Here's how McLean's Town looked before the hurricane:

      Here's what it looks like now:

       Last night Claire sent word that she had left Grand Bahama and had arrived at Nassau. 
       Today she left Nassau and flew to Miami, from where she'll catch her plane to Chicago.
       Tomorrow she will back at work on the Intensive Care Unit at Northwestern Hospital.