The Bahamas Hurricane Relief

October 2019 – December 2022

All Hands and Hearts (AHAH) has been in The Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian landed in September 2019, supporting the hardest-hit communities. Our most recent program, which concluded in December 2022, focused on installing hurricane shutters to increase resilience to future disasters and providing under-resourced families with long-awaited interior repairs to bring homes to a liveable standard.

Our Work

Our work in The Bahamas began in 2019, less than one month after Hurricane Dorian made landfall, initially clearing hurricane wreckage and providing vital response work. Due to the dire need for safe learning environments, we quickly transitioned to supporting the recovery of a total of eight school campuses, including the completion of Little Darlings Academy in the summer of 2021. With the support of our many partners, our recovery work has provided 1,300 students safe, disaster-resilient and engaging places to learn and thrive.

75% of all homes on Abaco were damaged or destroyed by Dorian, which has resulted in many families still living in temporary housing or small homes with 10-15 people in a small space. We’ve continued our work in Great Abaco by assisting the community with long-term housing recovery; rebuilding and repairing residential roofs, repairing interiors and increasing the resilience of homes by designing and adding custom-fit hurricane shutters.

Disaster Profile

On September 1, 2019, Hurricane Dorian made landfall as a Category 5 hurricane in The Bahamas with wind speeds of over 185mph, lashing The Bahamian islands of Great Abaco (pop. ~17,200) and Grand Bahama (pop. ~51,000). After striking The Bahamas, Dorian’s traveling speed slowed to 1 mph over Grand Bahama, prolonging the island’s exposure to life-threatening storm surges of 18-23 feet above normal tide levels. Dorian is the strongest hurricane on record for The Bahamas and has tied a record for the strongest Atlantic hurricane to make landfall.

Community Story

In March 2022, we completed interior repairs on the home of Mr. Gary Lewis, a teacher at Every Child Counts school (rebuilt by AHAH in 2021). Mr. Lewis lost his home in Hurricane Dorian and had lived in temporary housing for over two years. After mold removal and sanitation on the structural components, interior structural retrofits, installing drywall and wrapping/siding the exterior and internal finishings, we helped turn four walls and a roof back into a home.

Mr. Lewis continues his work teaching at ECC, impacting the students as they grow into young adults. He radiates warmth and passion even when faced with adversity. We were honored to work for such an inspirational person and were thrilled to hand over the keys to Mr. Lewis.

Program History

Phase One: Marsh Harbour, October 2019 - March 2020

Less than one month after Hurricane Dorian made landfall, All Hands and Hearts launched a program. The team worked on providing immediate response work such as mucking and gutting, debris removal and mold sanitation on homes. In addition, the teams started work on three schools: Every Child Counts, St. Francis de Sales and Central Abaco Primary School. In March 2020, we paused operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Phase Two: Marsh Harbour and Dundas Town, September 2020 - September 2021

After a six-month suspension of our volunteer operations due to COVID-19, our team returned to The Bahamas to focus on the long-term recovery of Great Abaco. The program supported the recovery of eight schools and other community infrastructure, including our resilient roof repair program.

Phase Three: Marsh Harbour area, November 2021 - March 2022

In this phase of the program on Great Abaco, The Bahamas, we focused on several scopes of work that can included roofing, interior response and interior rebuilds. We worked on 19 unique homes, in total.

Phase Four: Marsh Harbour area, September 2022 - December 2022

In this phase we continued to address the housing recovery in the Marsh Harbour area. We focused on the interior critical repairs of nine homes, with an additional scope of adding resiliency in any future hurricane by adding hurricane shutters and provided additional assistance to 32 homes.

Volunteers

Schools Completed

Children Back To School