REGION – Bahamian PM tells world leaders about Hurricane Dorian’s impact

Only three weeks since one of the most powerful hurricanes ever recorded laid waste to a large portion of the Bahamas, the country’s Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said: “The Bahamas experienced major hurricanes in 2015, 2016 and 2017. But on the first of this month of September, we experienced something way beyond anything we have seen before.”

“There are officially 56 lives lost . . . . But we know, we know that there are considerably more lives lost because there are still 600 missing because the rising then receding ocean water swept away young and old from their homes,” he said as he addressed the 74th gathering of the world leaders in New York Friday.

Pointing out that his country lays in the path of a number of seasonal hurricane trajectories, the Prime Minister said, “We cannot make meaningful progress toward or achieve sustainable development goals, if, as forecasters are predicting, that recent cyclonic and other extreme climate events are poised to become the new normal and may worsen.”

He then asked the delegates: “When one storm can obliterate an island-state or a number of states in one hurricane season: how will we survive, how can we develop, how can we continue to exist?”

Minnis said he is adding his “urgent plea to the cries and voices of many other leaders and citizens of the global commons urging the nations of the world here assembled to treat the global climate emergency as the greatest challenge facing humanity.”

A category five hurricane Dorian hit northern islands of the Bahamas between September 1 and 3. The islands of Grand Bahama and Abaco wore the brunt of the impact.

Source: United Nations