As I write this my daughter Claire is somewhere on the Island of Grand Bahama, |
Claire is part of a 4-person nurse strike team from among a group of nurses and doctors with the International Medical Corps.
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.
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. |
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.
However the family received a quick message on Sunday afternoon that the strike team had landed safely in Grand Bahama,
And that's all we've heard for now.