‘Heartbreak’ over Hurricane Nicole damage

CMC – Prime Minister of The Bahamas, Philip Davis has described as heartbreaking, images of the impact of Hurricane Nicole and promised that assessing the damage will be a priority for him on his return from the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt.

Nicole made landfall on Grand Bahama Island on Wednesday, strengthening from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane and packing sustained winds of up 75 miles per hour, after moving over portions of Abaco as a storm.

Streets and some homes were flooded on Abaco and Grand Bahama.

Nicole was the first storm to hit The Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian devastated the archipelago in 2019.

“I’ve been getting pictures from persons in New Providence showing the flooding. All of that is just breaking my heart as I speak,” Davis said in a video message from Sharm El-Sheikh.

“First priority is to assess, to get an update on what’s going on and address the normalization of what has been disrupted by this hurricane.”

Davis added that he understood the trauma citizens would be experiencing, with Nicole impacting the same northwest islands that were devastated by Dorian.

However, he reminded: “Remember that the Lord is not going to put on us more than we can bear.”

Davis thanked Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Tourism, Investments and Aviation Chester Cooper, who has been acting as prime minister in his absence, for ensuring that residents were alerted about the storm and were able to take necessary action to ensure that there was no loss of life and minimal damage.

As The Bahamas was preparing for the passage of Tropical Storm Nicole, Davis reminded the international community at COP27 of the “new reality” facing the country.

“We must become accustomed to events such as this,” he said.

“That’s why we are here making the point that we can’t do it alone and that our new reality is not as a result of what we would have done but what the industrialized world would have done and, therefore, they must come to the rescue of small island developing states such as ours.”

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Stacey N. Russell

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