Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas as a Category 5 storm last month, leaving severe destruction in its wake. Homeland security expert Juliette Kayyem joined Boston Public Radio Wednesday to talk about her recent trip to the Bahamas to document Hurricane Dorian aftermath response efforts.
While 14 of the 16 islands are open for business, the Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama islands were "devastated beyond belief," Kayyem said.
"They have up to 10,000 evacuees in Nassau in shelters and there are questions about whether they're going to rebuild in Abaco," Kayyem said. "There's also a racial component. Most of them are Haitian who sort of have secondhand citizenship in the Bahamas and worry that they might be sent back to Haiti."
Over 1,000 people are still missing and the wide consensus is that many bodies are buried under the rubble, Kayyem added.
"Talk to coroners, aid workers, everyone has a story about seeing dead bodies," she said. "Normally, body pickup happens within the first week. It's now a month later."
Kayyem is an analyst for CNN, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
