Dramatic video shows people in Bahamas swimming through rushing floodwaters

Dorian slammed into the Bahamas as a Category 5 storm, killing at least 5.

September 3, 2019, 8:14 PM

Dramatic video shows the "race against time" as a group of people in the Bahamas swam through raging floodwaters as the eye of Hurricane Dorian passed overhead.

ABC News correspondent Marcus Moore and his crew captured the footage as the eye of the Category 5 storm moved over the Abaco Islands Sunday.

"Things had calmed down and we were able to go outside for the first time, and started seeing people coming out of homes that had been destroyed in the area," Moore said on "Good Morning America" on Monday.

That's when he saw a group several hundred yards away.

"We could hear them screaming and our producer -- he was separated from them by this rushing, this torrent of water -- he had to swim," Moore said. "Because it was really a race against time, because we were in the eye of the storm. So it was calm, but we knew that within minutes that the rest of the storm would come through and it would be intense once again."

PHOTO: A group of people were rescued from raging floodwaters in Abaco Island, Bahamas, on Sunday, Sept. 1, 2019, as Hurricane Dorian slammed the nation with record force.
A group of people were rescued from raging floodwaters in Abaco Island, Bahamas, on Sunday, Sept. 1, 2019, as Hurricane Dorian slammed the nation with record force.
ABC News

Moore and his crew are heard on the video, urging them to swim.

The man, three women and two teenage girls made it across the rushing water safely, but were very shaken and crying, he said.

"Moments after that they went to a bunker, a safe area that's been set up here at the resort," Moore said. "And my crew and I, we stayed in the three-story condo building where we rode out the rest of the storm."

Hurricane Dorian slammed into the Bahamas Sunday as a Category 5 storm, killing at least five people on the Abaco Islands.

PHOTO: A group of people were rescued from raging floodwaters in Abaco Island, Bahamas, on Sunday, Sept. 1, 2019, as Hurricane Dorian slammed the nation with record force.
A group of people were rescued from raging floodwaters in Abaco Island, Bahamas, on Sunday, Sept. 1, 2019, as Hurricane Dorian slammed the nation with record force.
ABC News

The "destructive" Dorian is "unprecedented and extensive," Bahamas Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said on Monday.

Homes and businesses are completely destroyed and the country is inundated with an extraordinary amount of flooding, he said.

Minnis vowed that the government "will bring to bear every resource possible and all of our collective energy to assist those in the devastated and affected areas."

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