NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Disaster Reconstruction Authority Chairman Alex Storr said between $250,000 to $1 million in supplies and equipment are unaccounted for from the organizations’ inventory.
“We just completed an inventory exercise and so through that, I can’t give you a dollar amount but I’ll say that it’s a good amount of things that are missing to do with the dome city and with other projects. […] I estimate between $250 to 1 million,” he said.
Several months ago a forensic audit was launched into the Disaster Reconstruction Authority after ‘red flags’ were discovered. Since then, supplies were seized and recovered from a church in Abaco.
“Those supplies are at the DRA warehouse, we are putting measures in place to go after more supplies that we feel are missing, that some were part of that and some may be part of other things, but we are putting measures in place to go after everything that the DRA has that is out there, that is not in our possession right now,” Storr said.
Storr added that the agency is currently in the process of building and renovating various shelters across the country. He said however that Abaco remains a priority with building shelters that are sturdy enough and they are trying to acquire additional funding to build more.
“The shelter in Abaco will be resilient and have solar. We are putting in the hurricane windows and everything, making sure that even after the storm that will be of use to the community.
“We want to get this one in Abaco completed first to show our partners and our donors proof of concept and then use that to shop around to find the other ones, and we changed the design so that we can scale it up or down as needed for different island communities.”
The Disaster Reconstruction Authority has also announced that they are working on technology that will aid citizens in the path of hurricanes to get a sufficient warning ahead of time.
“When you get an evacuation call please evacuate because we don’t want in the middle of a storm, we decided to stay. We didn’t have to use resources to rescue. These storms are getting more traffic loss of life. It can be magnified if persons don’t pay attention to what’s going on,” Storr said.
He added that he is aware that many people may not want to leave the comfort of their homes during a natural disaster because they may find shelters intolerable, however with the upgrades they have in the pipeline, they plan to address the issue.
“We want to build the shelters and make the shelters comfortable so people will be comfortable coming to the shelters right now, but humans prefer to stay in their houses because they don’t want to come to the shelters.
“That’s why we think that if we build the shelters in a manner that people will feel comfortable coming to, more people will come up the times of storms.”
Aside from Abaco, the island that took the brunt of category 5 Hurricane Dorian in 2019, Storr said they are now making assessments for renovations of shelters on other islands.
“We’re looking at Cat Island and Exuma, and then I know there’s an organization that we’re partnering with now that wants to build one in Grand Bahama, and so we hope to go to every island and in some islands will need multiple shelters.”
