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Message from Dominica:
It’s 4 30am and I Just spoke with Prime Minister Skerrit via Satellite phone. He and family are fine. Dominica is not!!
Tremendous loss of Housing and Public buildings. The main general hospital took a beating. Patient care has been compromised. Many buildings serving as shelters lost roofs, which means that a very urgent need now is tarpaulins and other roofing materials.
Little contact has been made with the outer communities but persons who walked 10 and 15 miles towards the city of Roseau from various outer districts report total destruction of homes, some roadways and crops.
Urgent helicopter services are needed to take food, water and tarpaulins to outer districts for shelter.
Canefield airport can accommodate helicopter landings and it is expected that from today, the waters around the main Roseau port will be calm enough to accommodate vessels bringing relief supplies and other forms of assistance.
It’s difficult to determine the level of fatalities but so far seven are confirmed, as a direct result of the hurricane. That figure, the Prime Minister fears, will rise as he wades his way into the rural communities today -Wednesday.
The urgent needs now are roofing materials for shelters, bedding supplies for hundreds stranded in or outside what’s left of their homes and food and water drops for residents of outlying districts inaccessible at the moment.
The tarmac at Mellville Hall was not too badly damaged so the strip should be opened in a day or two for larger relief planes to land.
The Prime Minister is hoping to make contact with ABS Radio in Antigua this morning to speak directly to the outer world as to the state of Dominica and its urgent needs. The country is in a daze – no electricity, no running water -as a result of uprooted pipes in most communities and definitely to landline or cellphone services on island, and that will be for quite a while.
In summary, the island has been devastated. The housing stock significantly damaged or destroyed. All available public buildings are being used as shelters; with very limited roofing materials evident. The country needs the support and continued help and prayers of all. Will update further as new information is received.
Hartley Henry
Principal Advisor to Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit of Dominica.
Report by Daily Mail, UK:
Wrath of Maria: Aerial video shows the trail of devastation left by 200mph winds on Caribbean island of Dominica where it killed ‘at least six people’
- First drone pictures show the scale of devastation on the Caribbean island of Dominica left flattened by Maria
- The 200mph winds of the Category 5 storm barreled over the island and so far six people have been killed
- Dominica incurred ‘mind-boggling’ devastation and lost Internet and phone communication during the storm
- The grainy film, taken from the air, shows destruction on the island as the storm now moves onto Puerto Rico
The first footage showing the trail of destruction wrought by Hurricane Maria on Dominica has emerged – revealing homes and businesses to have been razed to the ground by the 200mph winds.
Having passed over the tiny Caribbean island on Tuesday and wiped out all communication, video shows scored of damaged houses over the town of Portsmouth on the mountainous island, surrounded by scraps of debris.
Six deaths have so far been reported on the island which suffered ‘mind-boggling’ devastation after the Category 5 storm barreled over.
It was captured by a CBC cameraman on a military aid flight over the stricken country in a first attempt at a massive aid operation.
Due to the widespread chaos, the airplane found nowhere to land and was forced to return to its base in Barbados.
The latest information coming out of Dominica – which was gained from amateur radio operators, as all electricity, internet coverage and phone signal has collapsed – suggests that 100 per cent of buildings have been damaged, with 20 per cent totally destroyed, 70 per cent badly damaged and 10 per cent relatively lightly affected.
Coulibistrie, a village in a valley on the Island’s west coast, is now submerged by water, and Good Hope, a village on the east side of the island, has been destroyed by landslides, radio operators have reported.
There are fears that hundreds may have died on the island, where the hospital was demolished by 160-200mph winds last night.
Portsmouth, Dominica’s second-largest town, which has a population of almost 3,000 people, is understood to have sustained serious damage. There are no cars on the roads, which have been rendered impassable by debris, and locals are relying on bicycles to seek help.
The capital, Rouseau, which has a population of 16,500, has also been hit hard by the winds. The residence of the Prime Minister, which was destroyed in the early stages of the storm, is located on the northern outskirts of the capital, where the hospital has been torn apart, depriving locals of medical assistance.
Kat Fin, a Dominican currently in the United States, tweeted: ‘Our house withstood every hurricane since 1976 no problem. Hurricane Maria took it down.
‘Trees were driven into walls like battering rams, leaving gaping holes,’ she added.
‘The roof was being pounded by flying boulders and the rain was gushing through hurricane louvres. The wind raging though the house had twisted furniture flying.’
A source involved in the aid operation from Barbados told MailOnline that six deaths have been confirmed on Dominica so far and the two worst affected areas are understood to be Marigot – a village near the island’s main airport – and the capital, Roseau.
The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Committee (CODEMA) said that the first aid helicopter landed in Dominica on Tuesday afternoon, after an unsuccessful attempt earlier in the day.
The warning came after Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit sent out a series of dramatic posts on his Facebook page as the storm blew over that tiny country late Monday – but then stopped suddenly as phone and internet connections with the country were cut.
‘The winds are merciless! We shall survive by the grace of God,’ Skerrit wrote before communications went down.
A few minutes later, he messaged he could hear the sound of galvanized steel roofing tearing off houses on the small rugged island. He said that even his own roof had blown away.
In the last message before falling silent, he appealed for international aid: ‘We will need help, my friends, we will need help of all kinds.’
The storm knocked out communications for the entire country, leaving anyone outside Dominica struggling to determine the extent of damage, though it was clearly widespread. ‘The situation is really grave,’ Consul General Barbara Dailey said in a telephone interview from New York.
The Daily Mail
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https://www.facebook.com/abstvradio/photos/pcb.1517435705022315/1517434611689091/?type=3&theater