Teams En Route to the Bahamas After Hurricane Dorian

The winds gusted at over 200 mph. The waters rushed up from the ocean, with storm tides hitting 25 ft in some areas on the island. As Dorian hovered over the Bahamas and Abacos, it became clear that this would be the most destructive storm in the islands in recent memory.

Dorian hovered over the Bahamas and Abacos, battering the islands with severe winds and storm surges.

Dorian made landfall on September 1, 2019 as a Category 5 hurricane.

Essential services on the islands have been disrupted and and access to care and shelter for many of the survivors is difficult to come by.

By September 3, Team Rubicon recon teams had deployed to the affected islands to work with local authorities and determine the needs of those affected.

Based on the devastation left by Hurricane Dorian, and unmet needs identified by local authorities  in the Bahamas, Team Rubicon is leaning-in and will be launching a large-scale response operation.  

While the majority of our international operations focus on medical care, our response in the Bahamas will have a larger scope; we will bring to bear any resource or capability we can in order to help the affected islands stabilize, respond, and begin to recover from Dorian.

Beginning September 5, 2019, we’ll begin deploying our WHO-verified Emergency Medical Team (EMT) Type 1 Mobile to Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas. Our EMT Type 1 Mobile will work to help stabilize the situation, provide medical care to survivors in hard-to-reach and remote areas, and helping to monitor for and prevent disease outbreaks. 

Team Rubicon’s Type 1 EMT Mobile deployed to Mozambique following back-to-back cyclones earlier this year.

The EMT Type 1 Mobile deploys rapidly to disaster zones and provides triage, clinical care, and basic laboratory and pharmacy capabilities.  The expert teams are completely self-sufficient and are equipped with temporary shelters, a robust medication supply, and best-in-class technological support.  Most recently our medical teams ran extensive operations in Mozambique following Cyclones Idai and Kenneth

In addition to providing mobile medical services, Team Rubicon is leaning into the situation and launching an operation to assist communities with debris management in Great Abaco and Grand Bahama. To support early response efforts and help affected communities get on the road to rebuilding, the organization is deploying sawyer teams to clear roads and remove downed or hazard trees. And, Team Rubicon plans to deploy additional teams of volunteers to provide expedient home repairs, flooded home muck-outs, roof tarping, and heavy equipment operations.

Our core operations include many distinct capabilities, such as: chainsaw operations, muck-outs, debris removal, expedient home repair, and damage assessments. In short, anything we can do to restore a sense of normalcy and get a community back on its feet and on the road to recovery, we will do.

As the needs of survivors shift after the initial response effort, Team Rubicon will continue to lean in and provide services to the best of our ability.

And as Dorian makes its way up the East Coast and begins affecting the Carolinas, we continue to have team staged up and down the coast, prepared to deploy to communities affected.

  • Reflection

    A Better Tomorrow

    A volunteer responding to tornadoes in Ohio gets a glimpse at the hidden value of the work Greyshirts do.

  • Preparedness

    How to Prepare Your Pets for Disaster

    From leashes for Fido to carriers for Kitty, here are our top disaster preparedness for pets tips to add to your emergency planning now.

  • Feature Story

    Serving World Health Means Innovating

    From Haiti to Ukraine, for World Health Day, we look at where we've delivered disaster relief and humanitarian aid over the past 14 years, and how far we have to go.

Read More Stories