do they even know the first thing they need? one of the great challenges is not only getting aid into their hands but getting aid on to those islands because of the mess that is either any airstrip or would be any port or anywhere the beaches or everything that s in the water there. what do they need most at the moment? reporter: yeah. they re clever on man o war and a lot of the other islands. they start today clear debris. why? they needed the helicopters to land. they cleared the baseball field for us. we landed. it was clear of debris. that s where the helicopters have been going in. they got in the water, got the food. check. their main things are sanitation. they re so afraid of disease right now. in many areas, not where i was on man o war, but in the other areas of the abacos, they know that there are dead bodies yet they tell me that have not been recovered.
folks survived this when you see the images coming out there. most of the deaths so far have been that have been reported, which is obviously they don t even have their arms wrapped around it, has come from those islands. what are folks telling you about the number of people that they re missing or people that they know have perished there? reporter: you know, a lot of people have spoken to me about people they know have passed away. you re talking in the dozens. they know they haven t been reported yet. you have to wait for the official word from government. in speaking to people, they would give me the roll call of going through neighbors and friends they hadn t heard from or they know were either incredibly injured and needed to be medivaced out or couldn t find. those are the hard rending stories. the people they can t find. communication went down sometime around sunday. they have no idea what s going on. i have to add a, kate, they didn t know why the storm was
let s get back to the bahamas where the pictures tell the story. vast destruction left in the wake of hurricane dorian. the prime minister calling it generational devastation. you can see it everywhere. before and after pictures, we can show you right here. the international airport on great abacos island. completely underwater. nowhere for rescue and relief planes to land and no way to get supplies out and in. you can see what was once one of the neighborhoods. called the mud. one of the impoverished neighborhoods. looks like every home is submerged or wiped off the map. the abacos islands are ground zero for the impact. we were reporting live there yesterday. she s spent 24 hours on the ground there. paula, how do you describe what
they re starting to worry about things like cholera. they need a cleanup effort. after that, some kind of sanitation. human sanitation issues, all after that they need that all-important infrastructure. there are roads that are completely impassable because of debris or water. they need to be able to do that. they need to be able to use their phones. they can t communicate with anyone right now. no power whatsoever. even if you ve got a generator, fuel. where do you get your fuel? i can tell you they had certain homes that had been storing fuel and went to get it so they can run a few generators but that s really all they had. self reliance is key. the one thing they want everyone to know, they want to know where the government is. they want to hear from the government. from this issue of security, which we have to talk about, there have been reports, of course, of violence and looting. they want the national defense forces from bahama on those islands as soon as possible. we saw milit
you ve seen in the last 24 hours? reporter: you know, the residents of those islands, as bad as the pictures are, this storm defied description. they re telling us, look, as bad as the pictures are, they went through the equivalent of a 36-hour horror movie. they were dodging projectiles flying out of the sky. they were pulling mattresses off of their beds to hold in doors and windows and garages that were coming over on top of them. they cannot even describe what they have been through and even to them, when they see the destruction in front of them, kate, they cannot believe those who have survived. they cannot believe they ve survived these are hardened people with these storms. you can name them. go through francis and lloyd and they re saying no, hurricane dorian was something that they have never seen strike anywhere in that area.