Hurricane Dorian September 6th, 9am Search and Rescue Mode

Hurricane Dorian September 6th, 9am Search and Rescue Mode. Recovery efforts just beginning. How to mitigate the damage.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Rory O'Neill, and for more than twenty years I've
been a radio reporter in Florida covering rocket launches, Florida
Man and yes, hurricanes, lots and lots of hurricanes. So
here's what we know about Hurricane Dorian right now. It
did wipe out the northern Bahamas, it brushed the eastern
coast of Florida, and it's hit in the Carolinas as
a Category one storm and is pulling off the coast.

(00:22):
Soon it will be Canada's problem, but Nova Scotia in particular,
and by then it should be an extra tropical storm
and not caused too much damage. So now attention turns
to the Bahamas, which is still in search and rescue mode,
not recovery mode just yet. The US Coastguard among the
first agencies to respond. Yesterday, there was little pockets, i
would say, of devastation. You had some places that looked

(00:45):
like they had seen small parts of the storm, and
other places where you had homes that were completely leveled
and still floated as of yesterday. Today, we were tasked
with trying to find smaller islands that were kind of
out of touch. They got some coordinates from another helicopter.

(01:05):
We came across the island and they were about fifty
people on the island. It was completely devastated. All the
homes were completely flattened, vegetation gone, and when we got
there they were there had already been about ten or
fifteen people met invact and when we got there there
were ten people roughly with varying injuries um, some possible fractures,

(01:30):
some people so that their homes had fallen on them. UM.
So our main priority was getting the most injured out.
And that's the problem when places are really just decimated.
You were working from the ground up. In one case.
You know they're trying to make rescues, but they can't
even see. They're limited to daytime operations because there's no electricity,
and when there's no electricity, there's no light head of

(01:53):
public works. And the Bahamas was on ABC's Good Morning
America for Life, but it's dark to community gets she
was down. Um, we don't know what it's going on
right now. There's a Florida lawmaker named Chevron Jones. He's
Bahamian and he was able to contact a cousin who
was actually part of the search and rescue effort. He
actually posted the phone call, he recorded it and put

(02:14):
it on Twitter. Search and rescue is still going on
with trying to still trying to account for for folks,
for families. Um, we're just the airplanes that are going
in and carrying you know, food and water and emergency supplies,
you know, to keep you know, to keep them going,
you know, while we get all of the people that
really really need to get out of there out. So
there's a lot of injured people. Um, we're just trying

(02:36):
to you know, we're doing roachations right now getting them out,
and you're exactly right. I think next week will be
a better time. You know, at least the emergency effort
should have died down. But right now some of the
first people going in are members of an urban search
and rescue team that's based out of the city of Miami.
The city dipping into its own resources, they'll pick up
the tab for this project. He said. You know, the

(02:58):
Bahamas is so close there, their neighbors, and they couldn't
really resist helping. When we see suffering, We've experienced it firsthand,
and that in essence is frustrating for us, but we
also recognize that the response is important, and we have
to do whatever we can in order to support, especially
a community that's so close to us now in Broward County,
that's where Fort Lauderdale is, and other big cities like Parkland.

(03:20):
They're gonna take in a lot of these Bahamian people
who now have nowhere else to go, and so you're
bringing in adults, trying to find them housing and even jobs.
Perhaps they're actually foreign citizens, so there's a whole set
of issues there. Now. The school superintendent in Broward County,
Robert Runs, says they're actually getting ready to take in
some of the kids who are gonna need to learn reading, writing,

(03:41):
and arithmetic. I think we have a moral responsibility at
this moment, given the fact that we have been spared
the worst of the hurricane, to help our families, our
friends that are in the Bahamas. But all that's part
of the long term recovery. At the moment, it's still
search and rescue a bote. Now there are supplies being

(04:01):
brought to the islands by cruise ships. They're discouraging private
boat owners from making the trip because well, really they
could just get in the way. The storm has kicked
up so much debris caused so much new debris it
actually shifts the sands, and they have to make sure
port markers are accurate, and the port markers and Booey's
that didn't get blown away have to be reset. So

(04:22):
the Coast Guard wants private boats to stay out of
the way unless they've gotten specific permission to go inside.
So the recovery effort is just beginning. Lots and lots
of money is going to be needed. So how do
we get here? Is this Hurricane Dorian all part of
global warming or is it just a fluke. Well, it's
the second year in a row we've had a landfall

(04:43):
by a Category five hurricane. That's pretty rare. It's also
the most powerful Cat five storm ever recorded in that
part of the Atlantic, so it is a history making storm.
Phil Klotzbock used to work with the late Dr William
Gray at Colorado State University. Actually hurricane experts, yes, based
in Colorado, but they're hurricane experts and Phil and Phil

(05:06):
is part of the team that releases one of those
annual hurricane predictions like is it going to be busy
this year, is in an active season? Etcetera, etcetera. You know,
there are more of these forecasts coming out every year,
but Dr Gray started back in the nineteen eighties. Bill
says these forecasts are important and they can help communities
like the Bahamas no if it's going to be extra busy.

(05:27):
You know, the thing we always say with all the
seasonal forecast is it's, you know, our best estimate at
any particular time of how active this season is going
to be. But we can't say where the storms are
going to go, and so obviously you just need to
be prepared the same for every hurricane season. You know,
hopefully it won't be as bad as last year's was,
but you know, even if we only get one significant
hurricane all year, you know that that significant hurricane hits you,
it's an active season for you. I usually interview Phil

(05:50):
once or twice this season, and it's funny that he
can recall numbers and dates and years and which storm
and which letter and I can't remember lunch yesterday. You know,
it's funny. So Dr A like when we when we
first met it, we just talking about baseball statistics, and
remember he used to rattle off the stats of all
the hurricane seasons and I was like, how does you
know this stuff? But then once you will with it
every day, you know, it just kind of becoming like

(06:10):
it's like baseball stats, like you know, Ted Williams in four.
So we don't know how bad it really is. And
the Bahamas yet, Yeah, there's been some helicopter footage that
shows communities wiped out and that death toll is continuing
to climb. But the cost of rebuilding is really unknown
as the environmental impact is still being measured. We've seen
video of oil tanks and chemical tanks just spilled open,

(06:34):
so we don't know the damage it's being done on
the water, in the water under the water, let alone
the foliage that just looks like it's been ripped away
and we'll have to be replanted. So the cost of
rebuilding all this is one thing. And then what do
you rebuild? Do you make it like it was before
it didn't look very hurricane improof then? And do we
get more of these Cat five storms? And how should

(06:54):
we make these things be sturdier for the future. And
that's called mitigation. That an important point that we try
to emphasize as you know, mitigation and trying to take
proactive measures um because since we've seen huge increases in
damage um and yet we've seen no increasing landfalls. And
that's just because we have more people and more stuff,
which because what happened in the Bahamas really could have

(07:16):
happened to Florida. The initial forecast, yes, that one the
President drew the sharpie around allegedly. Uh that initial forecast
did have Dorian coming right through Florida like a steam engine,
right through the heart of Orlando over Labor Day weekend.
Imagine that all the tours and a Cat five storms
storming and rolling overhead for days because it was a

(07:36):
slow mover. Well, luckily that didn't happen. But the problem
with mitigation is a big one. Those expensive high rises.
Everybody wants to live on the coast, but no one
wants to pay for it, especially insurance companies that seem
to pay for it over and over and over again.
And that bill somehow gets shifted down to the taxpayers
through FEMA, which has to pay for it over and
over and over again. So the relief efforts are underway

(07:59):
in Bahamas. It's gonna take a long time. It looks
like Florida missed the worst of it. It will cost
tens of millions of dollars to clean up all the
damage along the whole Florida coastline. And we're still not
sure of what the storm reports will be from the Carolinas,
but they'll need to be cleaned up to and we're
all gonna pitch in through tax dollars and through insurance premiums.
But that's the way the system works, because we'll also

(08:21):
pay for it through our generous contributions charities, churches, and
the human spirit. I'm Rory O'Neill.