A woman begs for prayers as she stands precariously on an exposed staircase to escape roiling grey waters beneath her.
“Please pray for us, please pray for us everyone, me and my baby, everyone who stayed in the apartment building, we stuck right here. Please pray for Abaco, I’m begging,” she says as Hurricane Dorian pounds the island in northern Bahamas on Sunday.
“Lord, please cover this house — there’s nowhere else to go,” the voice says in another clip.
The scenes were captured in video posted on the Facebook account of someone going by the name Jetta Clavi, from Miami, Florida, after category 5 Hurricane Dorian hit the Caribbean island chain on Sunday.
According to her profile on Facebook, Clavi works as a housekeeper at the Baker’s Bay Golf & Ocean Club, a private resort on Great Guana Cay, northeastern Bahamas, and lives on the Great Abaco island, which has suffered “catastrophic” damage.
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It was one of several videos posted by people sheltering from one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes to ever hit land. Although the storm had weakened slightly by Monday morning from winds of up to 185 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said there was still a threat to life and urged residents not to leave their shelters.
“Please, my baby’s only four months old, please pray for us. The apartment building, the whole roof came off, we just standing right here,” Clavi says.
She can be heard saying that some people attempted to swim across a short stretch of water to a large white building — some made it, while others were swept away in the high winds. The incident she described was not filmed.
The building Clavi and others were sheltering in was less than 2,600 feet from the shore, according to Google Maps — yet the whole landscape was covered with swelling water.
Another video Clavi uploaded shows how the hurricane ripped the roof from her apartment building, leaving exposed beams and flailing wires. Debris and belongings lie in piles.
In yet another clip posted by Clavi, dozens of people shelter in a dimly lit room as the storm rages outside.
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“And this [is] the only house standing in the neighborhood. And everyone is here,” she says. “This is the only safe place we could go, there’s no other houses… The roof is not off and it’s not flooding.”
A later video shows people huddled in one corner of the room with a hole in the ceiling.
Another video posted by an unnamed Bahamian shows a family sheltering in a bathroom as a woman prays for their safety.
“Father, there’s no one else for us but you in this moment because we believe, oh God, that you are still in the saving business,” the voice says.
The camera then moves around the house to show water pouring from the ceiling as the wind whistles outside.
Caroline Radnofsky contributed.