Trinidad nationals stranded in The Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian seek help

Peter Nash, left and Brent Wilson, two of six Trinidadians who survived Hurricane Dorian on The Grand Bahama island.
Peter Nash, left and Brent Wilson, two of six Trinidadians who survived Hurricane Dorian on The Grand Bahama island.

(Trinidad Guardian) Sur­viv­ing Hur­ri­cane Do­ri­an for six Trinida­di­an na­tion­als in The Grand Ba­hama is­lands in Freeport al­most two weeks ao is on­ly half their night­mare. Now strand­ed in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas and mon­ey in their pock­ets run­ning low, they are ask­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment to get them on a flight home.

“We need help from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment. It’s re­al­ly hard to get food and wa­ter and since we got off from the is­land of Grand Ba­hama we have to buy things. We al­so had to use our mon­ey in Freeport and now we reach a po­si­tion where we need help to go back to Trinidad,” said Brent Wil­son, one of the strand­ed men on Sat­ur­day.

 
A fel­low Trinida­di­an Dar­ney Gre­go­ry, who lives in Nas­sau, has opened his two-bed­room apart­ment to Wil­son, Pe­ter Nash and De­clan Vial­va.

Nash,who grew up with Gre­go­ry in Siparia, said his friend did not hes­i­tate to as­sist him and his co-work­ers.

The three men now share a cramped bed­room with two air mat­tress­es.

The oth­er three Trinida­di­ans—Mark Mar­tin, Nigel Williams and Adisa Mar­cano—are all stay­ing at the homes of friends in Nas­sau, hop­ing to leave on the next avail­able flight to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Our fam­i­lies want us back home and we were hop­ing that by Sun­day (to­day) we would have been back home,” ex­plained Nash.

Nash said that sol­diers from the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force had vis­it­ed them on Fri­day , took all their in­for­ma­tion and as­sured them that they would com­mu­ni­cate with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to get them home soon.

The TTDF sol­diers, who met GML out­side the Breezes Ho­tel where they were stay­ing, said they were go­ing to drop off food for the men. They al­so con­firmed that the in­for­ma­tion about the men’s predica­ment had al­ready been re­layed.

But the Trinida­di­ans who all worked for a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny on the is­land do­ing weld­ing and fab­ri­cat­ing are grow­ing weary of the wait­ing game af­ter their near-death ex­pe­ri­ence. “We en­dured three days of pound­ing rain and ride it out in a two-storey build­ing and af­ter that, food be­came an is­sue and then trans­port to get off the is­land. Now we just want to go home,” Wil­son said.

He said they were frus­trat­ed by at­tempts to reach their em­ploy­er, who had not even of­fered to buy their plane tick­ets to go back to Trinidad. “We called them, we sent them mes­sages and they on­ly re­spond­ed re­cent­ly.”

He said the sec­re­tary of the com­pa­ny had on­ly sent him What­sApp mes­sages re­cent­ly say­ing they were sor­ry and “feel bad” and know “their fam­i­ly can­not hear from them,” but has still not of­fered a so­lu­tion to their prob­lem.

Hur­ri­can Do­ri­an slammed in The Grand Ba­hama and Aba­co is­lands flat­ten­ing every­thing in its path and killing at least 50 peo­ple to date. At least 1,300 are still feared miss­ing. Thou­sands of peo­ple have been dis­placed and have been trans­ferred to the is­land of Prov­i­dence in Nas­sau, the coun­try’s cap­i­tal where they are be­ing housed at a makeshift camp and sev­er­al ho­tels.