“The news says for us to get ready for a Category 4 hurricane. We’ll see how the house holds up,” my father texted me.”We might lose the boat and camper.”

The storm never reached where my parents are located in Port Charlotte, Fl. Them and few thousand others got lucky, many did not.

I took the news with a grateful sigh of relief. The hurricane is no longer hitting my parents so all is well, right? Wrong.

Hurricane Dorian slammed Grand Bahama Island as a destructive Category 5 with wind speeds reaching over 185- miles-per-hour and gusts reaching 220 mph, according to Vox.

“Residents in the Abacos should continue to stay in their shelter until conditions subtle later today. Hazards include strong wind gusts and storm surge 12 to 18 feet above normal tide levels with higher destructive waves,” the National Hurricane Center tweeted over the weekend.

“These hazards will continue over Grand Bahama Island during most of the day, causing extreme destruction over the island,” the tweet concluded.

Dorian slightly weakened over the Bahamas but for almost 40 hours completely destroyed what was in its path. The storm, it seemed, was hovering over the Bahamas as if it wasn’t ready to let go, moving west at only 1 mph.

We literally can walk faster than that; the slower the storm moved the more destruction it caused. The islands that have been crashed by horrific chaos have been reported to have 30 deaths as of now and the number is expected to rise.

Images of submerged neighborhoods have flooded my timeline. Houses underwater, no longer housing the families it once held and is now, sadly, useless. People are left with nothing. Officials estimate that it will take billions to rebuild the islands and restore what was lost.

United Nations News reported that about 70,000 people live in Grand Bahama and Abaco Island and around 62,000 people will need extensive assistance including accessible drinking water and 60,000 people will need food.

“Hopefully it misses. Just track it every day,” I had replied back to my father. “Yeah that would be nice,” he replied.

It did. And part of me feels guilty for thinking in my head that I no longer needed to pay attention to the storm. Just because it wasn’t impacting my family anymore means it over right? Wrong.

Finally steering away from the Bahamas, the storm now a Category 1, made landfall over Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and came with dangerous winds and flash floodings. Videos of floods in North Carolina washing away the streets of peoples lives makes my heart ache.

As the storm weakens, it is reported by the National Hurricane Center that parts of Eastern Canada can even be impacted.

“So what do you know? Is the storm coming to you guys or not? Do you know when? I asked my stepmom.

“We don’t know much. The news keeps saying they are unsure but we think it is turning north. Hoping for the best. Talk to you later,” she responded.

This wasn’t the case for some families in the Bahamas; this may not be the case for some people in North Carolina. Families have been torn apart and people are missing.

My sigh of relief that I felt when I heard my parents would be okay is something I would never want to take back. I urge people to take a step back and look outside to their roads, homes, food and water on their plates and realize how lucky they are.

Don’t sit back with just a sigh of relief.

Donations can be made to The American Red Cross, The Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity and many more.