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Editor's Note: Patrick Oppmann is a CNN correspondent in Havana, Cuba. Jaide Timm-Garcia is a CNN producer in Atlanta. Jose Armijo is a CNN graphic reporter based in Mexico City.
Freeport, Bahamas (CNN) - It's been almost a week since Hurricane Dorian devastated the Bahamas, but the deadly hurricane continues to chase those of us who resist the storm here.
At least 45 people are dead, hundreds are missing and about 70,000 are homeless. There is no electricity or drinking water. The aid comes slowly to the island of Grand Bahama, where Dorian was stationed for almost two days and caused damage that one usually witnesses in a war zone.
It is impossible to fully capture the devastation we see every day. We are only 120 kilometers from Florida, but the kilometers of debris that Dorian left in its wake have made this part of the Bahamas feel as remote as any other place on Earth.
- READ: "There is nothing here": the future is uncertain for 70,000 people in the Bahamas left homeless by Dorian
On August 30, CNN sent the three of us to Freeport, in Grand Bahama, to cover the cyclone. The trip was so last minute that we bought many of the hurricane cover commodities at an airport newspaper stand: dried meat, peanut butter and as many bottles of water as we could carry.
We had to fight to take American Airlines flight 3489 from Miami, which turned out to be the last from the United States to Grand Bahama before Dorian arrived.
Our first sign that this hurricane was going to be exceptionally dangerous was when an agent at the boarding gate announced by the intercom that only residents of Grand Bahama could get on the flight. All hotels would be closed, he said. If you don't live there, you wouldn't have anywhere to stay.
Then a supervisor approached and disavowed him.
"These are the guys who stand up in the rain on television," he said, pointing to us. "If you want to risk your life, do it."
Isolated from the outside world
The plane was almost empty. In a matter of minutes we landed in Freeport on a sunny day. With the storm approaching and the airport about to close, the customs agent made us pass with just a glance.
We placed our equipment in a rented car and ran to a beach to report live on CNN about the coming storm.
Workers climb into a store window while preparing for Hurricane Dorian's arrival in Freeport on August 30. (AP Photo / Ramon Espinosa)
When we finished the day, a man and a woman walking along the beach stopped to ask what we were doing. Without hesitation, the couple, Kristine and her boyfriend Graham, invited us to rescue themselves from the storm with them in their apartment overlooking the sea.
The next night, Dorian began beating Abaco and Grand Bahama as an incredibly powerful category 5 hurricane. Our meteorologists told us that if there was a category 6 classification, Dorian would qualify.
The storm howled for hours in the dark. Winds and rain hit the building everywhere. Daylight finally came, but the sun never appeared.
- LEE: Survivors in the Bahamas face the aftermath of Dorian with difficulty
Jose Armijo records Patrick Oppmann's reports from the balcony of an ocean view apartment while Hurricane Dorian hits Freeport.
The apartment had a protected balcony, and we were able to continue reporting during the storm even when we lost power and cellular service.
We realized that the storm flooded the island on Sunday night when a group of neighbors knocked on the lobby door and asked to let them in. Their houses were underwater and most of them had barely left with their clothes on. Several had managed to take their pets. A woman sobbed saying she couldn't find her two cats when the water entered.
A group led an old woman soaked who had fallen and had broken her hip during the race to escape her home. We brought towels and shared our supplies while they settled for the first of several nights on the lobby floor.
A man said he saw his wife drown
On Tuesday, Dorian's winds had lessened enough to venture us to examine the damage. There were power lines and fallen trees everywhere. A submerged school bus blocked a road.
We arrived at an area called “the bridge” where an organized rescue operation was being organized in a hurry to save hundreds of people trapped in their homes.
There we found that the bridge was underwater and was being used as a ramp to launch jet skis and rescue boats in the rough waters of the flood. The storm was still blowing with hurricane force, and the volunteers told us that several ships had turned with the winds.
There was little coordination or organization for the rescue effort, but unlimited bravery.
Many evacuees had clung to the beams of their houses flooded for hours, whipped by wind and rain. We asked where their houses were, but we could only see some roofs and trees in the distance. There were hundreds of homes there, rescuers told us, we just couldn't see them.
In some cities east of Grand Bahama Island, residents say that most of the houses were destroyed. Many people are still searching for relatives missing after the storm.
When rescued evacuees got off the jet skis in the water to the waist, many collapsed and had to be taken to a safe place.
"People are exhausted," rescuer Rochenel Daniel told us when driving winds forced them to suspend their operations. "We had to load some of them, some couldn't even do it."
As we fled the weather that was getting worse, a specter of a man in a red jacket approached us and whispered: "I lost my wife."
He said his name was Howard Armstrong, who was a crab fisherman and hours before he had seen his wife, Lynn, slip under the flood waters in his home while they waited to be rescued. I was full of bruises.
"My poor wife had hypothermia and was standing on the cabinets until they disintegrated," he said. "I continued with her and she just drowned in front of me."
Armstrong said he then swam to his neighbor's house. She was also dead, he said.
The airport is paralyzed
The next day we headed to the airport where we had arrived five days earlier. When we approached, we saw a small plane turned sideways.
One of the terminals was torn everywhere. The debris was scattered inside the domestic terminal, and the storm had thrown the wing of an airplane with such force that it had crossed a wall and had been shattered on the ground.
The other two terminals were still standing, but they had been underwater for days, and the only runway at the airport was full of debris.
This was the only airport on the island. We all realized that we were going to be here for a while.
Although there is no electricity or drinking water, we managed in Kristine and Graham's apartment the best we could. We slept with all the windows open in the suffocating heat and loaded water buckets up three flights of stairs from the pool to run the bathrooms.
The department that the Oppmann team used as a base, seen on September 3. Graham Couser and Kristine Mills found the CNN team on the beach making live shots the day before the storm and invited them to stay with them during the storm.
Regardless of the challenges, none of us would choose to be anywhere else.
In the days after the storm, Bahamas officials have constantly talked about "assessments." Evaluate the port, evaluate the airport, evaluate the power grid. There have been many evaluations but very little action.
The help that came to Freeport, the largest city on the island, has improved conditions, but only a little. The cell phone service has returned largely, some stores are open and you can even occasionally get hot food and cold beer.
But as soon as you leave Freeport, those few privileges disappear.
Residents say the help they need has not come
The only road to the east end of the island that is still affected is still underwater in some parts and completely razed in others.
The apocalyptic rubble is where the houses were before.
Residents say that the storm surge reached 9 meters in some places and uprooted entire houses from its foundations.
A gloomy Washington "Smitty" Smith sat in the front yard of the house he built in Bevans Town. Dorian tore the roof and opened holes through the cement walls. The service station on the other side of the street was also completely destroyed.
"Grand Bahama is currently dead," said Smith, with the trauma etched on his face.
"One of the painful parts of all this ... is that I have not yet seen a government official come and say: 'Here is a bottle of water' or come to see what is happening."
"Grand Bahama is now dead," says resident Washington Smith. His house and business were destroyed by the storm.
Government assistance has also been delayed in reaching the city of High Rock, a few kilometers later.
There, resident Marilyn Laing got tired of waiting for officials to appear and instead organized her own help system, and friends and family help her deliver water and food.
At least 14 people remain missing from this city of about 300 inhabitants. Five others have been confirmed dead, residents say.
CNN producer Jaide Timm-Garcia and photojournalist Jose Armijo prepare for a live shot from the city of High Rock in Grand Bahama.
A man sat, almost catatonic, in a white plastic chair. Neighbors say that three of his family members, a daughter and two grandchildren, were swept away by the waves.
A US Coast Guard helicopter UU. It hovered over a nearby wooded area, looking for the dead. Residents tell how they know they have found another body.
When the wind rises, it smells like death.
Laing said he has to continue working to help others in his broken community or despair will overcome it.
"I have no words to say how serious [the destruction] is," Laing said. "Maybe one in 10 houses is standing."
We lend you our satellite phone so you can contact the family and tell them you are alive.
Nearby, a man who had lost his house took small sips from a bottle of water. I knew I would need to make every drop last.
Bahamas, Hurricane Dorian
