Bahamas: Roof of under-construction hurricane shelter collapses

Bahamas: The under-construction hurricane shelter in Abaco, Bahamas recorded a partial collapse of roof trusses on Sunday. This shelter expected to withstand a Category 5 hurricane collapsed unexpectedly leaving the authorities stunned and concerned.

The incident is expected to take place between the night of 31^st August and the morning of 1^st September and the Disaster Risk Management Authorities (DRM) addressed the issue to be of major concern.

“The DRM Authority doesn’t take this lightly. We will continue to drive efforts for a shelter where Abaconians can feel safe in the strongest of the storms. We will not accept anything less than best practice for the resident’s safety,” said the authorities.

The DRM added in their release that almost 50% of the trusses were destroyed in the middle bay of the structure. The authorities further confirmed that no fatalities or injuries have been recorded from the incident.

The damaged site is currently being assessed by the contractor, Wilkem Solutions, and project manager, Chris Symonette, and associates. However, the exact cause of the incident has not been confirmed yet by the authorities.

The DRM on the other hand has planned to assess the damage with representatives set to fly to the construction site for a detailed inspection. The engineers will be assessing the damage to all the trusses individually and will create necessary results accordingly.

The Shelter, which was earlier proposed to complete its construction by the end of the year has now stood to be unclear if it will be completed at its scheduled time due to the incident.

Notably, this shelter was designed in order to stand still even in the strongest of hurricanes, however, its unexpected damage has raised concerns for many. Social media users are targeting the authorities for the ongoing project with their opinions.

Casey N Taylor Collins, one of the users on social media stated, “Yep. Surely looks like it was designed for category 5. We can tell by the number of windows and the roof collapsing.”

“Seems like these builders don’t know how to build proper trusses to hold up a roof. Thankfully it happened before a hurricane. They need proper engineers to oversee these builders,” another user named Martha Albury stated.

Another user said, “Well child, The hurricane hadn’t even come yet and the building dropped down!!!! Don’t know the idiots who built that but thank God it didn’t happen during a hurricane. You know how many people it could have killed! What idiots!”