Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ap­pealed to “all cit­i­zens who are able and will­ing,” to demon­strate Trinidad and To­ba­go’s “usu­al gen­eros­i­ty and com­pas­sion to the peo­ple of the Ba­hamas.”

The prime min­is­ter made the call in a state­ment is­sued yeste­day evening.

He urged cit­i­zens to come to the aid of the peo­ple of the Ba­hamas who have been dev­as­tat­ed by Hur­ri­cane Do­ri­an.

Do­ri­an con­tin­ues to af­fect the Ba­hamas al­though it has been down­grad­ed to a Cat­e­go­ry Two hur­ri­cane.

The im­pact to Grand Ba­hama is still ex­pect­ed over the course of the next 24 hours.

Sev­en peo­ple are con­firmed dead on Aba­cos Is­lands.

The prime min­is­ter’s state­ment came as the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (CDE­MA), the re­gion­al in­ter-gov­ern­men­tal agency for dis­as­ter man­age­ment for CARI­COM, con­tin­ues to sup­port the Ba­hamas na­tion­al re­sponse.

“The Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­pects that it will know the full ef­fects of the hur­ri­cane and the fo­cused re­sponse of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go by the time the Cab­i­net meets on Thurs­day,” Dr Row­ley added.

Sev­er­al groups in Trinidad and To­ba­go have tak­en steps to en­cour­age vol­un­teers to come for­ward with aid.

How­ev­er, due to the lack of ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, many of them have on­ly sought mon­e­tary con­tri­bu­tions at this time.

The Red Cross ex­plained out­right they would not be send­ing vol­un­teers or phys­i­cal items to the Ba­hamas while the Sal­va­tion Army ex­plained that while the Sal­va­tion Army Nas­sau had been prepar­ing to lend aid, they were not able to send vol­un­teers at least for one week.

Chris Matthias, Di­vi­sion­al Sec­re­tary of the Sal­va­tion Army called on per­sons will­ing to send aid to de­posit do­na­tions in­to Sal­va­tion Army ac­counts at Re­pub­lic Bank and First Cit­i­zens Bank as they seek to ob­tain items to send to the Ba­hamas.

Matthias not­ed it may be at least a week be­fore vol­un­teers get to the most af­fect­ed is­lands, due to flood­ing at the air­ports there.

The Red Cross sim­i­lar­ly asked good samar­i­tans to make de­posits in a bank ac­count for the re­lief ef­forts.

Lo­cal NGO ‘Is There Not A Cause’ has al­so start­ed a Go­fundme page to raise funds for re­lief items.

Both the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress how­ev­er, have sent out re­quests for do­na­tions of phys­i­cal items such as canned food items, bot­tled wa­ter, med­ical sup­plies, toi­letries, san­i­tary nap­kins, di­a­pers and ba­by sup­plies.

They have asked that these items be dropped off at var­i­ous con­stituen­cy of­fices across the coun­try.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion has al­so called for a do­na­tion dri­ve in the wake of Do­ri­an’s de­struc­tion, ask­ing vol­un­teers to drop off items at their Barataria of­fice.

Ba­hami­an Prime Min­is­ter Hu­bert Min­nis took to the skies yes­ter­day to view the vast de­struc­tion caused by the hur­ri­cane, which was down­grad­ed to Cat­e­go­ry Two by yes­ter­day morn­ing af­ter mak­ing land­fall at Aba­co as a pow­er­ful Cat­e­go­ry Five hur­ri­cane on Sun­day.

It dev­as­tat­ed the is­land of Grand Ba­hama while sit­ting over the is­land for over a day.

Min­nis ad­dressed the na­tion, which re­mains large­ly with­out elec­tric­i­ty and lim­it­ed telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice, at 8 pm.

He said parts of Aba­co are dec­i­mat­ed.

He added that the coun­try can ex­pect more deaths to be record­ed and asked for prayer for the fam­i­lies of those who lost their lives.

The prime min­is­ter al­so urged cit­i­zens not to make the grief worse for fam­i­lies by spread­ing pic­tures of those who died.

Ear­li­er in the day, the Roy­al Ba­hamas De­fense Force con­tin­ued its search and res­cue ef­forts in Aba­co and Grand Ba­hama, where flood­ing re­mained a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge.

“Right now we’re go­ing to con­tin­ue with our search and res­cue ef­forts. We would have been told yes­ter­day that we took about 21 per­sons out of Aba­co with the as­sis­tance of the US Coast Guard,” said Lieu­tenant Com­man­der So­nia Miller of the RBDF.

“As these HE­LOs bring in­jured per­sons out of Aba­co, we’re go­ing to in­ject de­fense force Marines on the re­turn flight to Aba­co so we can in­crease our man­pow­er on that is­land.”

Ac­cord­ing to ini­tial Unit­ed Na­tions fig­ures, over 60,000 per­sons were in need of food and wa­ter fol­low­ing Do­ri­an’s dev­as­ta­tion.

Two Rapid Needs teams from CARPHA com­pris­ing 18 per­sons have been mo­bilised as well to help while the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies have said they will work with Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency to pro­vide aid.

The Caribbean na­tion is still be­ing af­fect­ed by the out­er bands of the hur­ri­cane, as it moved north along the South West coast of the Unit­ed States.

Up to yes­ter­day evening, all of the coun­ties in Flori­da State re­mained un­der a state of emer­gency, al­though trop­i­cal storm watch was lift­ed for Broward Coun­ty and Palm Beach coun­ty.

The Fort Laud­erdale Air­port air­port was re­opened.

How­ev­er the states of Geor­gia and South Car­oli­na were put on alert as Do­ri­an con­tin­ued to move north.