Hurricane Dorian—the Story of the Greatest and Deadliest Hurricane to

Erick Auguste Throughout the island of Abaco, Bahamians spoke of "Erick the barber," the man who a sheet of plywood sliced off his outstretched left arm. At the same time, he clung to his elderly mother in Hurricane Dorian's surging waters, sending his limb and his mom out to sea. On an island with no cell phone reception, ravaged by the most powerful cyclone in the nation's recorded history, word of Erick the barber and his mangled arm and his dead mom spread like folklore, with each man telling a different version. But, in the end, the story of Erick the barber, Erick Auguste, is the story of tragedy and resiliency, a storm's savagery, and how family and strangers came together to save one man's life. Erick Auguste, a Bahamian citizen, born to a Haitian mother and a Bahamian father, was airlifted to South Florida after being injured due to Hurricane Dorian's destruction. He said he lost his home, arm, and his mother in a matter of minutes. Erick Auguste faces a long and challenging road ahead of him to recovery as he remained a patient at Jackson Memorial Hospital shortly after the passage of Hurricane Dorian. "I thank God that I saved the most that I could. I couldn't save my mom," he said. Fighting through pain, agony, regrets, and loss, Auguste described the day when he said Hurricane Dorian, the Category 5 monster storm, took everything. "I don't have anything. There is nothing left," he said. Auguste stated that he was with his family on September 1 when the hurricane quickly moved in and unleashed catastrophic wind and rain. "When I looked over, I have glass in my house, and I look at the water, and the waves came, and the water was about five feet high," he said as he pointed to his chest. Aware that he was the only family member who could swim, Auguste began pulling his two small children, wife, sister, and mother to safety to prevent them from drowning. "I gripped onto the tree tightly while trying to make a chain with each outstretched hand gripping the other,'" he said. "I was like, 'Nobody leaves,' and I was like, 'I don't care, whatever happens, do not let go of me.'" Auguste said he lost most of his left arm when he reached for his elderly mother, attempting to grab her, and he was forced to watch the raging storm surge sweep her away. "This is when this piece of plywood flew off and cut the arm off when I was lifting it so high in the air," he said. "By the time I'm looking, my eyes were open, and I saw her, and she was just smiling at me." Heartbroken and in disbelief, Auguste said he spent the next 14 hours in excruciating pain, with no medication, all while searching for help. He stated that it was like someone took a dull knife and just kept cutting his hand. When first responders arrived, they rushed Auguste to a nearby hospital. He was later airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he underwent multiple surgeries on his arm. But, in a twist of irony, as he begins his long road to recovery, Auguste said he'd make the same decision again if it meant saving his mother's life. "It was for Mom. It was for Mom. If I had to do it again, I would do it again," he said. Auguste's wife, sister, and children stayed with family members in South Florida while receiving medical treatment at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. On Sunday night, September 1, Auguste, his sister, Yorline, his wife, Elsie, his mother, Matinise Elysee, his son, Erin, and his daughter, Chloe, waited in the TV room of his house on the east side of the house on Hummingbird Way, no more than 800 feet from the raging sea. The children slept, and his mother, a Seventh Day Adventist follower, prayed in every corner of the room. "We call her our prayer warrior," he said. "She gets up at 4 a.m. and prays. All-day, she prays. Kisses me, goodnight prays." Auguste realized the storm would be a worthy adversary when a new gust blew off the plywood, he had nailed outside a sliding glass door. The door flew open, and his wife turned to him and said, "Baby, we have to leave," he recalled. It was too late to flee. The storm was raging. It was not long — 30 minutes, Auguste supposes — before the roof shingles peeled off and waters surged into his house from the ceiling, the doors, the windows. Auguste grabbed his 2-year-old daughter, Chloe, and pressed her body against his chest as waves reached his neck. His sister, Yorline, held onto 8-year-old Erin. The family clutched one another, forming a chain that worked its way outside. They sought refuge, but there was no standing home insight. The water kept rising higher and higher. Auguste is 5-feet, 11-inches tall, but his wife, mother, and sister all are 5-foot-3. If the waves reached his neck, he thought, his family behind him must be underwater. Auguste turned around to check and saw his mother struggling as swells washed over her. He held Chloe in his right arm and extended his left to his mother, a woman in her 70s. Matinise Elysee was visiting from Haiti when the storm hit. At that moment, Auguste said, he thought about how he had begged his mother to return to Haiti before the storm. "She told me, 'If you fight, I fight with you guys,'" Auguste noted. Auguste had just clasped Elysee's hand when the plywood flew past. He said it hacked his arm off just above the elbow so quickly that he did not immediately feel pain. Instead, he watched helplessly as the ocean took his mother and his severed arm. He swears he saw his mother smiling as she was swept away. Her body has not been recovered. Yorline Auguste, a 20-year-old college student, saw it all. She thought her right arm wrapped around a tree — a Caribbean pine or maybe a Coconut palm — her left hand gripped her nephew's upper arm. Then, as the surging ocean water slammed into her, she faced the hardest decision of her life: Let go of her nephew, who would surely be swept to sea, or help her brother, who no longer could hold back the waves with just one arm. "I thought we were all going to die anyway," she said. She held onto Erin, but sadly her brother floated away. Auguste wrapped a loose palm frond around his right index finger, hoping to latch onto anything. It did not hold up against the storm surge but nudged him into the downed pine trees that formed a dam and held him in place near a stop sign on Hummingbird Way, just yards from his home. He guessed he sat there for an hour before the water receded. The winds were still raging and brisk, and the rain was still pouring. He heard his wife scream his name. He said, "I'm here, I'm here, and I'm near Uncle Lou's house." Uncle Lou — that is what he called his neighbor two houses down. An ex-policeman named Steven and another neighbor — who the family does not know, even now — swam out to help survivors. The two men found Auguste and carried him to his van, where his wife, children, and sister hid. Knowing Auguste needed immediate medical attention — better help than the wet T-shirt they had pressed against his stub — they decided to drive to the Treasure Cay Fire Station a mile away. But the wind lashed the van so hard that it only moved what felt like inch-by-inch, the family said. A trip that once took a minute took 30. Finally, they made it to the fire station — or what remained of it. Hurricane Dorian had peeled the roof off and sliced a fire truck in half. There was an intact ambulance. The paramedic inside insisted he could not get the family to a shelter because he had to check on his children. The ex-policeman, Steven, offered to drive the ambulance. "He was a stranger, who, out of the kindness of his heart, left his wife behind to help us," Yorline Auguste said. "He is definitely a hero to me," he concluded.