9/7/2023 0 Comments Bahamas aftermathTheir main message has been that The Bahamas is ‘Open for Business’: as Jibrilu stated, “ost of the country’s islands are open to visitors, and those tourists are badly needed.” Following this lead, both formal and informal messaging from the island appeared: “we are battered, but not broken” and “in unity we will be stronger” were some of the messages in Prime Minister Minnis’s earliest national addresses to the public other media campaigns that transcended platforms, such as #BahamasStrong, spread quickly. The initial campaigns included a simple map of the entire country relative to the two affected islands, subtly providing a basic geography lesson to everyone. In step with Prime Minister Hubert Minnis, the Ministry of Tourism and Aviation has played a substantial role in messaging and communicating recovery efforts, so much so that the /relief – the official relief page for the country – is platformed off of the Official Site of The Bahamas ( ). The immediate crisis communication responses led by the Director General of the Ministry of Tourism and Aviation, Joy Jibrilu, have been some of the most effective that I have personally witnessed in wake of a disaster. Abaco and Grand Bahama accounted for 19% of the country’s room supply (which does not reflect the sharing economy or cruise tourism) minimally, then, we can assume that increased efforts to redirect this tourism demand to other parts of the country will be part of the recovery strategy. And before Hurricane Dorian arrived, it was set to be a record year with 4.5 million visitors – 700,000 who had been to the two affected islands – during the first seven months of 2019. The Bahamas typically ranks fourth in the Caribbean region in terms of tourism’s direct total contribution to GDP (behind the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Jamaica). It is, without a doubt, the most important industry for the country and similar to its Caribbean neighbors, it is economically tourism-dependent. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, in 2017, tourism accounted for 47.8% in total contribution to the country’s GDP and over 55.7% of total employment. įollowing the storm, that only hit two of the 30 inhabited islands that make up The Bahamas, the tourism industry dropped across the country. Further, the preliminary estimations of property loss are around $7 billion, with only half of this damaged property being insured ($4 billion in loss in Abaco, $2 billion in Grand Bahama, and $1 billion in New Providence). At the time of writing this, there is an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of debris – from homes and offices which were flattened by the winds and sea surge – that alone will cost upwards of $74 million to clear and remove. Most calamitous, though, was the storm surge that rose to 20-feet above sea level, accounting for many of the 600 people who remain missing, likely washed out to sea. Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Urban Search and Response Team marked on doors of homes in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, search and rescuers are spraying ‘Cs’ on doors of structures that remain standing, indicating the building had been searched with no causalities found ‘Ds’, however, are marking buildings where the dead have been found. Much like the memories many of us hold of the ‘Xs’ that the U.S. The official loss of life remains at 56, but as the island continues to come to terms with the scope of the devastation, Duane Sands, Minister of Health for The Bahamas warned a week after the storm that, “ he public needs to prepare for unimaginable information about the death toll and the human suffering”. At its peak, there were sustained winds 185 miles per hour, with gusts registering at 220. Moving at a painfully slow speed of seven miles per hour, Hurricane Dorian was one of the strongest storms to make landfall in the Atlantic, leaving a path of devastation that is consistent with that of a 30-mile wide tornado. Over the last month, stories, reports, and photos across media outlets have given us glimpses into one of the worst natural disasters that the Caribbean region has ever seen.
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