MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – When Hurricane Dorian was beating Abaco in the Bahamas, Gertha Joseph filmed a video showing the fury of the storm surge and her efforts to protect her four-month-old baby Jaylen.
Joseph said there were about 50 other people, including more children, in the building in Marsh Harbour.
"Everyone is in the living room right now and the roof is about to lift," she said. "We are trying to figure out where to go next ... some people, the water just took them and those are the only people that [made] it over there. Some people didn't get to make it."
Joseph's dramatic video quickly went viral. Although the apartment building was destroyed, and she doesn't know how to swim, she and her family survived the storm. They need help to recover.
"She had lost everything in this tragedy, home, employment, clothes," Sabrina Clervil wrote in a Facebook fundraiser page. "My sister has been trying to cope with the loss of everything she worked so hard for."
According to Bahamian authorities, at least 50 people died, nearly 5,000 survivors evacuated to Nassau and more than 2,000 of them are staying in improvised homeless shelters.
For more information about how to help Joseph, visit her family's Facebook fundraiser page.