Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister, the Hon. Leon Lundy addressed Parliament of Wednesday on the impact Hurricane Oscar had on the country.  The storm entered the southern Bahamas last weekend passing over the island of Inagua as a category 1 storm.  It then left The Bahamas for Cuba where it later made a U turn impacting islands in the central and southern Bahamas on Tuesday.

Lundy told Parliamentarians that the actions of the government and the Disaster Risk Management Authority (DRM) were “strategic, coordinated and focused on ensuring that every possible measure was taken to protect lives and property.”

The State Minister further stated, “we acted immediately.  Within hours the DRM Authority had mobilized its technical teams and issued our first public alert placing Mayaguana, Crooked Island,  Acklins, Long Cay and Inagua under a tropical storm warning.  We did not wait.  We did not hesitate. We held a meeting at 1:30pm with Island Administrators and other key partners and ESF personnel to discuss the storm and its threat to the southern islands.  By 3:00pm that afternoon the warning had escalated to a hurricane warning  for the southeastern Bahamas.  Our team moved swiftly, the Southeastern Incident Command Center was activated, the National Emergency Operations Center was partially opened and by 6:30pm we briefed the nation along with the Acting Prime Minister through a press conference at the DRM Operations Center.  Throughout the night we remained in constant communication with the Island Administrator and his teams.”

Lundy also said that the DRM met with a team from Super Value on Saturday past to secure relief items for potentially impacted islands.