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Virtually no one was coming down the road in this island town of Grand Bahama Thursday afternoon. Aside from a body-searching crew, no team arrived with food or other help for those staying in a community that usually has about 300 people.
This is probably because Dorian has made access to High Rock difficult, like many other cities outside Freeport.
It means that images and stories of devastation in communities like these are just beginning to emerge.
It usually takes an hour drive from Freeport to High Rock on the south coast of Grand Bahama. For days after Dorian, high tide prevented him from driving there.
On Thursday, a CNN crew arrived after hours of driving, avoiding debris and driving on portions of destroyed roads. At one point, the crew nearly turned around because the water was halfway up the vehicle.
When the crew arrived, he found very little left of High Rock.
The obliterated health clinic is an unrecognizable heap, a spilled bed being one of the few clues of what existed before.
On the other side of the road, the police station painted in pink is torn. Its roof disappeared and one of the concrete walls collapsed. Slabs of the building are thrown.
It is clear that the ocean has invaded the building. Residents said that a stain on the yellow walls of the station indicated the height of the storm surge – almost at the height of the ceiling.
Each house in the city has been damaged or destroyed.
It is unknown how many people died or how many people fled before the storm. The remaining residents say that they are still waiting for help.
Dorian landed early Saturday in the form of a Category 5 storm, the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Bahamas. He swept entire neighborhoods on the northern islands of Grand Bahama and Abacos, then lingered there for days, beating again and again the same degraded places.
Before the storm, more than 70,000 of the 400,000 or so Bahamas lived on the islands of Grand Bahama and Abaco.
In Freeport, a town of about 43,000, life is still not near normal, but signs of life are slowly coming back – restaurants are opening; cruise ships begin to arrive; the airport is closed, but authorities say it's about to reopen.
Outside Freeport, the damage and suffering in cities like High Rock are just beginning to be understood.
Patrick Oppmann, CNN's Jaide Timm-Garcia and Jose Armijo were reported to High Rock, Bahamas. Jason Hanna from CNN wrote in Atlanta.
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