Big Hurricane Bears Down on Puerto Rico

A colossal hurricane packing 140-m.p.h. winds pounded the U.S. Virgin Islands late Sunday night, taking dead aim at Puerto Rico after devastating the tiny Caribbean island of Guadeloupe earlier.

Hugo, the eighth-named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, spun with storm-force winds that extended up to 100 miles from its eye. Its path was relentlessly west by northwest and it was expected to hit Puerto Rico early today.

Hurricane forecasters spoke bluntly and with alarm. “The people of Puerto Rico must be prepared,” said Bob Case of the National Hurricane Center here.

“That island has been spared something this huge for more than 30 years but, historically, even tropical storms have caused flooding there and mudslides that led to deaths. This could really be a catastrophe.”

In the Virgin Islands, the hurricane’s winds ripped away roofs and knocked out power on St. Thomas and St. Croix, about 70 miles east of Puerto Rico, officials said. Those two islands have most of the Virgin Islands’ 106,000 population.

Officials said stores in the St. Croix town of Christiansted were heavily damaged and there were reports of looting.

National Guard Adjutant Gen. Robert Moorehead said 1,000 people were evacuated to rescue shelters in St. Croix.

The governments of both the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, with a population of 3.3 million, mobilized the National Guard. Mass evacuations began Sunday from low-lying areas of western Puerto Rico. Sound trucks blared warnings through the streets of San Juan. The Port Authority closed the island’s airports.

15-Foot Waves Expected

“We are as prepared as we could be,” Gov. Rafael Hernandez Colon told reporters Sunday. In a statement on the emergency broadcast system, he said that waves 15 to 20 feet high are expected and urged the many who live in flimsy houses to seek shelter in churches or schools.

In the central Puerto Rican town of Utuado, a man was electrocuted when he touched a power line while removing a television antenna from his roof to prepare for the storm, police said. He was identified as Antonio Alago Gonzalez, 51.

Hugo is a Class 4 hurricane, the second-most powerful designation. Early Sunday morning, it stomped across the Leeward and Windward islands, throwing sheets of rain across Martinique, Dominica and Antigua.

Early reports indicated that Guadeloupe was the hardest hit, with five people reported killed and 80 injured. One person was killed in Montserrat and two in Antigua, according to Beacon Radio in Anguilla, but the report gave no details.

In Guadeloupe, the winds peeled rooftops off homes. Some 4,000 of the island’s 337,000 people were left homeless. Telephone lines were felled. Amateur radio operator reports said that as much as 90% of the banana crop was destroyed and that the island’s airport control tower was severely damaged.

No deaths were immediately reported, but at least 80 people were injured in Martinique, according to Jocelyn Vandvurdenghe, a French government official there.

Town Now Rubble

According to the Associated Press, Ernest Moutoussamy, the mayor of the village of St. Francois on Guadeloupe, was quoted on radio as saying that his entire town had become rubble.

“Aside from a few houses, almost all the rest are destroyed,” he said, adding that several tourist hotels, most notably the Meridien, suffered serious damage.

In Paris, a plane was sent Sunday with 60 rescue workers and emergency supplies for Guadeloupe, and two more were standing by waiting for Caribbean airports to reopen. Louis Le Pensec, French minister of overseas territories, told a news conference that his government will provide quick disaster relief funds to those who lost property.

Hugo, which had been moving at about 12 m.p.h. but had slowed to 9 m.p.h. when it hit the Virgin Islands, is the most powerful storm to threaten the eastern Caribbean since Hurricane David in 1979. David killed an estimated 1,200 people.

Path Could Change

Forecasters expect Hugo to move toward Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) after crossing Puerto Rico. Such landfalls occasionally change a storm’s path.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Hugo jogged north after hitting Hispaniola,” said Robert Sheets, head of the hurricane center.

And then? “It may be out near the United States where it could cause damage almost anywhere up the East Coast. We really won’t know for two or three more days.”