A blind Bahamas man hoisted his disabled adult son up onto his shoulders and carried him through Hurricane Dorian floodwaters to safety after the roof blew off their home, leaving them both exposed to the devastating storm’s destruction, CNN reported.
When Dorian touched down in the Bahamas earlier this week, it was a Category 5 storm — the strongest to ever hit the islands.
The beast of a tempest left unimaginable destruction in its wake, destroying homes, causing massive floods, and resulting in the deaths of at least 43 Bahamians with some 70,000 others left homeless.
On Friday, the Bahamian financial services ministry dubbed the situation a “humanitarian crisis.”
The island of Abaco was the first to be hit by Dorian and bore the brunt of its destruction.
During the storm, the Lowe family huddled in their house to wait out the inevitable destruction, but were forced to evacuate when their roof suddenly flew off, leaving them exposed to the disastrous hurricane.
But getting his entire family to safety was much easier said than done for family patriarch Brent Lowe.
For starters, the 49 year old is blind, and was already facing a difficult trek through the floodwaters himself. But he knew the situation was much more dire for his 24-year-old son, who has cerebral palsy and cannot walk.
“At that time it was raining and raining hard,” Lowe told CNN . “So I picked him up, threw him on my shoulder.”
When Lowe went to leave his home, he was stunned to find the streets completely flooded outside.
He explained the water off his front porch was so high, it came up to his chin.
“I was terrified,” Lowe admitted. “I didn’t realize the water was that deep. I was thinking maybe knee deep. It wasn’t until I stepped off and I realized, oh, I wonder if it gets deeper because that means I have to swim with [his son], you know what I mean.”
Thankfully, the water was shallow enough that Lowe was able to keep both his and his son’s heads above the surf.
It was a five minute walk to his neighbor’s home, but it felt so much longer as the pair battled the wind and the raging current of the waters. When they finally reached safety, they stayed inside until they could be taken to a shelter.
Since being evacuated to Nassau, Lowe said his son is being cared for by his sister while Lowe himself receives life-saving dialysis treatments.
“I really hope to get in contact with him because I really miss him. I want to see him,” Lowe admitted, adding that the future is uncertain for him and his family. Their home was destroyed, and there’s no telling when they’ll be able to return to Abaco.
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“We need a place to go,” he said said. “I don’t know exactly what we are going to do. We need help.”
h/t: CNN