Greenfield Park resident Kristin Dudley hasn’t heard from her parents in northern Bahamas since Sunday.
Doctors Denis Dudley and Sharyn Laughlin from Ottawa were at the family home on Abaco Island when Hurricane Dorian, then a category 5 storm, hit.
“We tried to get our parents out of Treasure Cay,” Dudley told Global News. “We found charters that were able to get them out but then they closed the airport.”
That was Friday. So her parents decided to ride out the fast approaching storm since they had enough supplies and a generator.
When she spoke to them on Sunday during the height of the hurricane, she said they were fine, but things were starting to get bad.
“The ocean has washed away the first floor,” Dudley explained. “Most of the windows have been blown out, and part of the roof on the other side has been caved in.”
Her parents and their two guests, also from Ottawa, just managed to make it to the attic in time. But since then, she hasn’t been able to reach them, and she and the rest of the family are worried.
“They didn’t have a lot of provisions, and also that my dad’s a diabetic,” said Dudley.
The house is located close to the tip of Leeward Beach on the island’s north coast. That area sustained a direct hit by the hurricane, which at times had maximum sustained winds travelling at 297 kilometres per hour. It’s the biggest hurricane to hit the island in modern history, and is among the most powerful in the Atlantic to come inland.
Now Dudley and her sisters are trying to find the four and maybe mount some kind of rescue.
“Because it’s gonna have to be by boat,” she noted.
The family has contacted various emergency services in the region as well as the Canadian embassy, but were told nothing can be done until at least the winds subside.
But Dudley chided local authorities for closing the airport Friday.
“I feel that maybe they were opened a little bit longer, more people could’ve gone out that evening.”
While they try to get word about their parents, they’re also trying to raise money to fund relief efforts in the area.