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Grand Bahama (CNN) - It takes a few seconds to be overwhelmed by the stench of death in Bahamas.
More than two weeks after Hurricane Dorian swept through entire neighborhoods, East Grand Bahama still looks like a war zone.
The carnage is so widespread that even the police can't stand to see it.
“The police say they don't want to go there. It's very difficult for them to go see their own people, ”said Patricia Freling, a Florida nurse who volunteers in East Grand Bahama.
“They think there will be many bodies. So we are preparing for everything. ”
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Freling is part of an American medical team on a relief trip to Grand Bahama, a once-beautiful island of 51,000 residents before Dorian pulverized it.
The team includes paramedics, nurses, a counselor and a retired US marine.
Around 1,300 Bahamians are still missing after Hurricane Dorian, two weeks ago.
Mental health counselor Betsy Rosander is used to difficult circumstances. But today is different.
"I think we will see really difficult things," he said.
“Most people have not wanted to come here”
Brittany Reidy, right, interrogates her team in Freeport before heading to East Grand Bahama.
The medical team is led by Brittany Reidy, 29, a nurse determined to help survivors in the most devastated areas.
"Most people have not wanted to come here," Reidy said. "But we said: 'Take us to the worst part."
During the one-hour trip of the team from Freeport to the east end of Grand Bahama, doctors smell the carnage before seeing it.
"That is the smell of corpses," Reidy said from the back of a van.
Ol 'Freetown Farm, the largest farm in eastern Grand Bahama, is destroyed. An employee died and the 100 animals are missing or dead.
The official death toll in the Bahamas is 52. But that number is expected to skyrocket, with 1,300 people missing two weeks after the hurricane.
Some may get trapped under mountains of rubble where houses once were. Others may have been swept away by the storm. Their bodies recently surfaced.
"My fear is that if no one stacks the bodies, they could still be there," said Tanya Steinlage, a pediatric emergency nurse.
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This is Steinlage's second aid trip to the Bahamas since Dorian attacked.
Steinlage said the bodies he found were probably dragged during the swells because there were no permanent structures in sight.
"They need to bring rescue dogs here to find them," she says. "At this time, they are only (considered) missing."
Long-term health risks abound
Just getting to this part of the Bahamas is a monumental feat.
Grand Bahama Highway, a road that connects the entire island, was impassable in many places for days.
Much of the infrastructure in the eastern half of Grand Bahama is destroyed.
Now that the road has cleared, doctors can reach places where residents had been trapped.
They enter a house, but there is no one inside. A water line on the wall suggests that ocean water up to the neck had emerged through the house.
"The smell there is just the mold of all the water," Reidy said.
Public service posts and trees uprooted from the ground became flying projectiles in eastern Grand Bahama.
Mold is not the only long-term health risk after the storm. In several parts of eastern Grand Bahama, the stench of sewage fills the air. There is no drinking water and the risk of infection is rampant.
Resident Patrice Higgs, 49, survived the storm at Mcleans' Town Cay. But she cut herself in the rubble.
The doctors gave him bandages, antibacterial soap and clean water.
Another survivor tells the team that he saw four people crawl during the hurricane. But like many other residents, they are nowhere to be found.
"It's hard," Steinlage said. “We all went to medicine to help people. And when there are no people alive to help, we have to redefine our sense of success. ”
Doctors expect many of the missing residents to be evacuated, either before or after the storm. But they fear that many are dead.
At the end of their first day in East Grand Bahama, doctors identified at least 30 places where bodies smelled, even if they couldn't see them.
Helen Perry, a practicing nurse and veteran of the Army, said she expects rescue dog teams to search for the bodies. If they do not, decaying bodies could cause a cholera epidemic.
"You just can't leave them," he said.
Try to rebuild from nothing
Countless houses were destroyed in the eastern half of the Grand Bahama Island.
Sean Russell is one of the luckiest residents of eastern Grand Bahama.
"I'm alive, and that's all that matters," he said. "Not everyone can say that."
But his house was destroyed, as were most of his belongings. "A loss of this magnitude is really difficult."
Russell breaks and deals with the memories of the category 5 hurricane that hit winds of 185 mph (about 298 km / h) and hit his island for days.
"No one in his wildest dream would believe that a storm would come like this," he said.
Now, everything you own fits in a small travel bag.
Professor Sean Russell evacuates to the United States after Dorian demolishes his home.
On Tuesday, Russell paid $ 49.50 to board a ship that evacuated hurricane victims to Florida. When he stepped on the boat, he wasn't sure exactly where he would stay in the United States.
“I don't know what the plan is. But I only go by faith, ”he said. "We're starting over, because I lost everything."
Russell then learned that a volunteer family in Florida was willing to receive him. But the long-term plan remains uncertain.
The teacher said he would love to rebuild in East Grand Bahama. He bought another ticket to return by boat on October 1.
But he knows that it might not be possible. He has no job to return to, and the building where he worked is destroyed.
"After this, I really don't think the Bahamas is the same," he said. "It will not be the same".
Rosa Flores reported from eastern Grand Bahama, and Holly Yan wrote from Atlanta. CNN's Nick Scott contributed to this report.
Bahamas