“People do feel like with lesser storms, they have been able to ride it out in the past in the Abaco Islands,” said Amelia Moore, an assistant professor of marine affairs at the University of Rhode Island whose research has focused on the Bahamas.
Ms. Moore, who traveled to the Bahamas during her Fulbright scholarship, said she was concerned because of the magnitude of Dorian.
“It’s a level of storm that people have never really experienced before,” she said of Dorian, which was a Category 5 storm when it hit the Abaco Islands. It was downgraded on Monday to a Category 4.
It has been two decades since a Category 4 hurricane barreled into the northernmost islands in the Bahamas, said Steve Dodge, the author of “Abaco: The History of an Out Island and Its Cays.” A professor emeritus at Millikin University in Decatur, Ill., he said that earlier storm destroyed his home.
“The last really big one was Hurricane Floyd almost 20 years ago,” Mr. Dodge said of that storm.
He has been visiting the Abaco Islands, part of what are known as the Out Islands of the Bahamas, since the early 1970s, when he started teaching a winter-term course there on nautical history and sailing. The islands are home to about 17,000 people.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/world/americas/hurricane-dorian-abaco-islands-bahamas.html
Comments