LETHBRIDGE - Two University of Lethbridge employees, and one city employee, have just gotten back after helping out with a humanitarian mission helping rebuild in the storm-stricken Bahamas.

Team Rubicon, a group that brings together military veterans with first responders, has been hard at work in the island nation that is still reeling in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian.

Nolan Meyer, Eric Foster and Leah Parker have just gotten back after a two-week-long deployment and say it was an eye-opening experience to see the damage brought about by the storm first-hand.

"There were vehicles overturned, houses ripped apart, roofs gone and twisted metal. It looked like bombs had gone off, Hurricane Dorian sat overtop of Marsh Harbour where we were deployed to for 30 hours. So, there was virtually nothing left," stated Meyer, the University of Lethbridge’s emergency preparedness coordinator.

Meyer, Foster and Parker used their vacation time to help with recovery efforts in the Bahamas.

The Lethbridge contingent was part of a team that consisted of 10 Canadians and 58 Americans. Members were stationed on Abaco Island, in and around Marsh Harbour as Meyer had mentioned, where they helped out in several ways.

With temperatures above 30 C, they cleared roadways, dismantled the inside of homes and other buildings affected by water damage and assessed damage while wearing Tyvek suits and masks for protection.

Parker was a radio technician in the military before becoming the radio systems coordinator with the City of Lethbridge and admits she missed the comradery and working together towards a common goal. She says the impact on the people in the Bahamas following Dorian was the most striking thing, apart from the obvious physical devastation.

"One gentleman who we helped with his house, he was about 60 years old, said he had five lifelong friends who he’d meet with for coffee every week," she explained. "He said they’re all gone, his family had survived, but his friends had all left."

Coming back from an experience like that, according to Parker, makes you appreciate the simpler things in life.

"The friends and the family, not the accumulation of stuff. So many places, we were tearing out their life as far as possessions went. It didn’t matter if it was Versace or Levi’s, it didn’t matter. It was all destroyed, it was all going. When it comes right down to it what actually gives you value in life is not possessions."

Foster responded to Hurricane Rita as an EMT back in 2005 and hadn’t done anything like that since. But that sparked his interest in helping people after disasters and, after seeing the impact of Dorian first-hand, Foster says it was surreal to see and hard to put into words.

"Areas we were in, the storm surge ranged from probably around seven feet to around 25 feet. We heard there were waves around 40 feet. Wind meters were broken on the island with gusts approaching 300 miles an hour. It’s really hard to describe, but there was devastation anywhere you looked."

With limited water supplies and only generators to produce electricity, people in the Bahamas are still looking at a lengthy recovery.