Strike Nurse

     As I write this my daughter Claire is somewhere on the Island of Grand Bahama,

...likely on a U.S. Coast Guard cutter with three other nurses and a small cadre of security guards, searching the flooded island for survivors and assessing what their medical care treatment needs might be and where it might be possible to set up a make-shift hospital.
     Claire is part of a 4-person nurse strike team from among a group of nurses and doctors with the International Medical Corps.

    The nurse strike team was sent out from the group's home base established a few days on the nearby island of Nassau. The team is gathering information on the needs and conditions in Grand Bahama, which information they will  then relay to the rest of the medical team waiting in their make-shift staging area set up in a Nassau resort. 
     Claire left last Monday, September 2, on a day's notice  - a disaster response nurse who has worked with a number of national and international medical organizations, Claire keeps a "to-go" bag always packed and ready to grab - for Daytona Beach, Florida, where her assignment was to care for the residents of nearby nursing homes who had been evacuated to a middle school gym in anticipation of Hurricane Dorian hitting the area.
       Below is a picture someone took of Claire comforting one of the evacuees while she was working the night shift.

    However, as the hurricane bypassed Florida, the evacuees were sent home and the shelter closed, and on Friday Claire deployed by plane with the rest of the International Medical Corps team to the Bahamas.
     The World Health Organization had tasked the IMC with assessing the east side of Grand Bahama, where some of the worst devastation had occurred. The group put together a 4-person "nurse strike team" of which Claire was to be a member.
       The IMC group landed in Nassau, which had been spared the destruction, and where they were given accommodations in quite a lovely resort hotel, as Claire describes it.
       As of Friday the airspace between Nassau and Grand Bahama was still closed for safety and there were no available planes anyway. The only transport at hand would have been a 14-hour boat ride. Therefore the group spent that day and the next at the hotel staging and organizing medical supplies,

...and logistical supplies such as fuel, of which there is none on Grand Bahama,

...and giving belly rubs to the search and rescue dogs, named Angus and Peter Pan.

      As of 10:45 PM Saturday night, at which time Claire messaged the family, there was still no transportation from Nassau to Grand Bahama and Claire and her fellow strike team members feared it would probably be the following week before they would be able to head out.
       However half an hour later Claire called me to let us know that a plane and a dry landing site on Grand Bahama had been procured and that she and her three other strike team members would be flying the following morning, Sunday morning, to the west side of Grand Bahama, which was dry, and landing in Freeport, where they'd stay at an Airbnb.

       It was during that phone call late Saturday night that Claire told me about being on the nurse strike team, and how as soon as they landed in Freeport they'd begin traversing the island by Coast Guard cutter accompanied by four guards, not American, but on assignment from an international company. She warned me that, as the electrical grid was down, there might not be any internet or phone service.
       However the family received a quick message on Sunday afternoon that the strike team had landed safely in Grand Bahama,

...and last night those who showed up for weekly open Sunday dinner,

...posed for a group "hello" to Claire, which I sent her via text.

    Late last night she sent out a brief text that she was back at the Airbnb on the west side of the island.
         And that's all we've heard for now.