Hurricane Joaquin Slams the Bahamas: Residents Evacuated from Devastated Islands

Days after Hurricane Joaquin completely wrecked several islands in the southern Bahamas, residents are becoming desperate and angry over the lack of basic supplies.

A shortage of clean drinking water across the southern Bahamian islands has created a critical need for more supply runs in the coming days. The Coast Guard is working alongside South Florida company Tropic Ocean Airways to load seaplanes with the supplies due to the major damage at San Salvador airport near Cat Island in the central Bahamas.

"People are hungry. They're thirsty. They haven't drank water in three days," Clinton Rolle, who lost his home and business to Joaquin, told Local10.com.

Volunteers have been grabbing supplies that were dropped off in Nassau and delivering them by airplanes and boats to the hardest-hit areas, the report added. On several of those islands, the airports, like everything else, were completely wiped out by the storm.

(MORE: Catastrophic Flooding in South Carolina)

Residents of Crooked Island were evacuated to Nassau, where it would be easier to treat them and get them food, water and other basic needs, Local10.com also reported.

Bahamas' Prime Minister Perry Christie told the Tribune that the effort to clean up the islands hit hardest by Joaquin would be a long process. Citizens have criticized the slow response to assist victims in the hardest-hit areas, and Christie said in a news conference that he would appeal to the U.S. to supply helicopters so they can reach islands where the airports have been destroyed.

"Between the various agencies of the government, NEMA, assistance we are receiving, we are relatively comfortable with where we are in terms of being able to put in place the basis of a massive effort of restoration," Christie said. "We do not know and have not assessed the extent of personal loss of homes."

Photojournalist Eddy Rafael observed the devastation from the air Saturday morning as part of an assessment flight that included Long Island, San Salvador, Cat Island, Rum Cay and Crooked Island.

"The south of the island near Clarencetown was just obliterated,” said Rafael. "People were running into the streets and making signals to land. You could see people tearing toward the airport ... thinking that we were going to head on to the airport. Which was kind of devastating; it really brought tears to your eyes that we couldn't come."

Crooked Island was also "completely obliterated," said Rafael, with massive flooding and damage to homes. "It looks like Grand Cayman did when Hurricane Ivan came through," he said. "It's just stick and stones. I didn’t see any people."

Many of the southern islands have an immediate need for food, water and sewage, according to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency. Several of the islands have seen persistent extreme flooding for days.

“All the water is contaminated. They’re really in need of everything … water, baby food, Pampers, anything. This place is devastated,” Coral Gables, Florida, resident Mike Fernandez told the Miami Herald. He's a healthcare entrepreneur who flew his private helicopter to the Bahamas to assist in relief efforts, the report added.

Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade tweeted a plea to get the evacuated Pitts Town, Crooked Island, residents airlifted to Nassau.

Numerous unconfirmed deaths were reported by satellite phone from survivors on the ground, Rafael says, but communications are sporadic as many of the islands are without power and residents are attempting to conserve sat phone batteries. An elderly man died during the storm, but it was not yet determined if that death was directly caused by the storm, according to the Associated Press.

The damage seemed to be confined to just a few specific areas. The Club Med resort on San Salvador appeared destroyed, Rafael reported. The club has since reached out to weather.com saying that while much of its intricate landscaping, including hundreds of palm trees, was ruined by the hurricane, no guests were present at the time of the storm and no staff members were injured.

The power station on San Salvador looked intact from the air, and the island of Exuma was "absolutely life as normal."