FLORIDA – Dunrobin’s Mike Beun has loaded up his pick-up and is off to help the islanders of Bahamas as they struggle to recover from Hurricane Dorion.

Beun has owned a home on Elbow Cay for about 10 years. Beun was not in the area when the hurricane struck, but saw some aerial footage and was devastated by what he saw.

“Seeing the island was destroyed was just mind-boggling,” he told 1310 News radio host Mark Sutcliffe yesterday (Sept. 5). “I spent days trying to get a hold of people. It’s been stressful.”

Beun and a friend packed up his pick-up truck with generators, chainsaws, tarps and other supplies and left Canada Tuesday, arriving in Florida on Thursday where they are hoping to hop on a boat today (Sept. 6) and head to the small island.

Beun says it looks like only about 30 per cent of the small island’s houses survived the hurricane. He saw some aerial footage and thinks his property may have been one of the lucky ones. Beun said he has seen a lot of Canadians on his emergency trip.

“From South Carolina on they had evacuations,” he told Sutcliffe. “You saw hundreds and hundreds of hydro trucks. Half of them were Canadian.”

Beun said he travelled through a few storms on his way to Florida. In the 12 years Beun says he’s been going to Elbow Cay, he has never seen the island hit as hard as it was by Hurricane Dorion.