By Wyatt Garrett and Ashlyn Brothers
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Category 5 Hurricane Dorian rocked the Bahamas this last week, and as it continues to threaten America’s eastern coast, many reflect on the damage already done.
The storm hit the Bahamas Sunday afternoon, making landfall as the strongest Atlantic storm ever recorded with winds of up to 183 mph. The storm hovered over the islands for almost two days before making its way to Florida’s east coast.
The death toll in the Bahamas is now 20 and expected to rise as relief efforts get underway.
Mandatory evacuations have been taking place from Florida up through the Carolinas as Dorian’s predicted track shifts often. Cannon Miller, a sophomore student at the College of Coastal Georgia in Brunswick, Georgia, said that the school made sure students knew of the danger approaching.
“The local board sent out evacuation notices to students giving them a certain period of time to leave before students are stuck,” said Miller. “I to evacuated Tuesday morning due to a mandatory order.”
Miller is currently staying with a friend’s family in Jesup, Georgia while the storm passes.
Hurricane Dorian is expected to spin back out into the Atlantic by this weekend, but its impact will be felt for weeks and months to come. Shannon Orfanella-Beyer, who moved to Northwest Arkansas after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, explains that the evacuation process is not an easy task.
“The day we evacuated we packed clothes for about 3-4 days, took pictures off the walls, gathered our important papers and other personal things we wanted and loaded our van,” said Orfanella-Beyer. “Traffic on that day was horrible, very slow-moving out of the city.”
After returning to New Orleans, Orfanella-Beyer and her family thought it would be for the best to move out of lower Louisiana. They decided to move to Springdale, Arkansas where they stayed in a friend’s basement for the first two months. Orfanella-Beyer said that getting situated into a new area presented its challenges.
“We have 3 boys who we had to enroll in school, find new doctors and having a special needs son it was not easy trying to find all new doctors,” Orfanella-Beyer said.
Orfanella-Beyer urges those in the path of the storm to listen to officials and to take evacuation orders seriously.
“Please listen to authorities and evacuate when they tell you,” said Orfanella-Beyer. “It’s not just the water you have to worry about, but you end up losing power. Pack your family up and head for a safer space.”
Tropical storm and hurricane warnings are lined up on America’s eastern coast, as far north as Maine, as Hurricane Dorian makes its way north.