Emergencies in Long Island Bahamas

Good to Know

• Both 911 and 919 work as emergency numbers throughout the Bahamas, including Long Island — 919 is the older legacy number and 911 was added later for the convenience of American/Canadian tourists, but both reach the same dispatch.
• Long Island is a Family Island (outside Nassau/New Providence and Grand Bahama), where emergency medical services are less developed than in the capital — for serious medical emergencies, expect a local stabilization response followed by possible air evacuation to Nassau.
• If you're out on the water (diving, boating, fishing — common activities on Long Island), it's worth knowing BASRA exists as a volunteer marine search-and-rescue service in addition to calling 911/919.
• Family Island emergency call systems in the Bahamas have occasionally experienced outages in the past, so it's smart to also know the direct number/location of the nearest police station (Clarence Town or Deadman's Cay) as a backup.
• There is no dedicated ambulance service on Long Island; in an emergency, residents and visitors are typically advised to call the local police, who help arrange transport to the nearest clinic.
• The community clinics keep standard weekday business hours (9am–5pm, Mon–Fri) and are not staffed or equipped as 24-hour emergency rooms — plan accordingly if you're relying on local care outside those hours.
• For anything beyond basic care — a serious injury, chest pain, or major trauma — the realistic pathway is medevac/air ambulance to Nassau or, for more complex cases, Miami; this can take hours to arrange and can be very expensive without evacuation insurance.
• Given the lack of on-island trauma care, many nomads and long-stay visitors carry medical evacuation insurance (e.g. through providers like SkyMed or AirMed) rather than relying on standard travel health insurance alone.