A Chinese State-owned enterprise on Sunday said that China has already evacuated 158 of its citizens from the Caribbean island nation of Dominica in the wake of tropical storm Maria.
The China Railway Construction Coperation (CRCC) said on its WeChat account that, "When Hurricane Maria hit Dominica on September 19 and the U.S. military evacuated people from the island, the CRCC is responsible for the evacuation of Chinese in Dominica, under Chinese foreign ministry's instruction."
A total of 158 Chinese were evacuated from Dominica to Antigua and Barbuda, islands in the Caribbean to the east of Dominica. The people include overseas Chinese, staff of the Chinese Embassy and Chinese employees of the China Railway and Hunan Construction Engineering Group, the WeChat message said.
According to a USA Today report on Saturday, the Category 5 Hurricane Maria made its way through the Caribbean early this week, smashing homes and ocean-side marinas and causing floods.
On Dominica, it killed 15 people after it made landfall on September 18, unfortunate casualties of what Dominica's Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit called "mind-boggling" damage, then adding, "a loss of all what money can buy and replace."
The hurricane paralyzed airport traffic on the island so the CRCC rented a ship on Thursday from Antigua and Barbuda, which can carry 270 people, to evacuate them by sea, and purchased food and water.
By now, 225 CRCC employees have arrived at the coastal area safely and are waiting for a second evacuation. After all Chinese people have been evacuated to Antigua and Barbuda, the Chinese foreign ministry will send planes to get them to China.
The Chinese government and military have conducted many missions overseas to evacuate their people as well as other countries' personnel, even from war zones and disaster areas in recent years, including Libya in 2011, Yemen in 2015 and New Zealand in 2016.
