MIAMI — The home that Charles Bethel’s gre at-gran dmother built in Miami’s Coconut Grove neighborhood in 1890 still stands, with a historical marker commemorating it as one of the first dwellings in the area owned by a settler from the Bahamas.

[For the latest updates on Friday, read our Hurricane Dorian live briefing here.]

It was fitting that two blocks away, at a church founded by some of Miami’s first Bahamian settlers, Mr. Bethel led a frantic effort this week to aid storm victims in the country of his ancestors. Miami was spared the wrath of Hurricane Dorian but the Bahamas suffered a direct hit, one that left the islands in utter devastation.

The ties could not be stronger between Miami and the archipelago less than 200 miles east. Bahamians settled in South Florida decades before Miami was born, building bridges and railroads and raising children who would become some of the region’s most prominent leaders. This week, their descendants, many veterans of devastating hurricanes, gathered across South Florida to lend a hand.

[Hurricane Dorian could swamp the coast from Florida to Virginia.]

“When we were desperate, people came to our rescue,” said Mr. Bethel, 68, a retired state juvenile justice administrator who lost his home in south Miami-Dade County to Hurricane Andrew, another Category 5 storm, in 1992. “The community pulled together. There was no sense of division. Now, we are doing the same.”