Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 18, 1995 TAG: 9509180108
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS LENGTH: Medium
Hurricane Marilyn has moved on from St. Thomas, but the Caribbean island that it left behind was a changed place Sunday.
Electricity, water and phones were out. Air traffic controllers, the windows of their tower blown out by 100-mph winds, used binoculars and radios to guide in relief flights. A quarter of the houses on the island were destroyed, and nearly all the others damaged.
In Charlotte Amalie, capital of the U.S. Virgin Islands, hundreds looted stores at a waterfront shopping center. No police were in sight.
``These are all odd shoes, man,'' said a young man at a sporting goods store. ``I can't find something that fits.''
The hurricane, the fourth to hit the Caribbean in as many weeks, tore through the Virgin Islands and eastern Puerto Rico Saturday, blowing apart homes, tossing parked airplanes into the air and killing as many as nine people.
Six people were killed on St. Thomas, home to 51,000 people. On St. Croix, the most populous of the Virgin Islands, two people died. One person was killed in Puerto Rico.
President Clinton declared the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico disaster areas, making them eligible for federal emergency aid.
Seven military transport planes landed Sunday on St. Thomas with the first relief supplies for island residents - plastic sheeting, water, telephone equipment and emergency medical supplies.
In St. Thomas, many buildings lost their facades, leaving them gaping open like doll houses. The Federal Emergency Management Agency at first said half the island's houses were destroyed, but later said a quarter were destroyed and many more damaged.
Marilyn blew out the windows of St. Thomas' hospital and flooded it, making it virtually unusable. Eight patients were evacuated Sunday, all by helicopter.
One stretch along the waterfront was blocked by two 30- to 40-foot yachts blown onto the road from the bay. The 82-foot U.S. Coast Guard cutter Point Ledge teetered on the pier, 30 feet from the roadway.
The dead on St. Thomas included three people who reportedly were aboard boats battered by 12-foot waves and at least one man apparently crushed by debris, said FEMA's David Sachs.
Police in Puerto Rico on Sunday found the body of a diving instructor from New York City in a sunken sailboat. Two more were killed by the storm in St. Croix, hospital officials said without elaborating. It was not clear if they were included in the St. Thomas count.
At least 50 more people were injured or missing in St. Thomas.
Sunday, Marilyn was churning northwest through the open Atlantic, well east of the U.S. mainland. At 11 p.m., its center was about 615 miles south-southwest of Bermuda and its top sustained winds were about 100 mph.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB