Hurricane Luis Cuffs U.S. Islands With Gales, Drenching Rain

After lashing Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands with gale-force winds and flooding rains, mighty Hurricane Luis roared north into the open Atlantic on Wednesday.

The odds of the season’s most powerful hurricane affecting the U.S. mainland were “slim,” said Jerry Jarrell, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center.

On the northern Leeward Islands, however, Luis dealt a crushing blow. Two hotels on Antigua were swept out to sea while a hospital was damaged by winds that were clocked at 146 m.p.h. before the measuring device blew away. Although telephone lines were down and electricity cut off, ham radio operators and cellular phone callers reported severe damage to at least half the buildings on the island, a former British colony with a population of about 68,000 people.

Some minor looting was reported on Antigua, and troops sealed off the downtown area.

Britain said its warship Southampton, which had been standing by off Montserrat, where a volcano eruption threatened, had been dispatched to the stricken island. The British Red Cross, disaster specialists from the U.S. State Department, and soldiers and police from Grenada and Barbados were also on the way.

Other hard-hit islands include Anguilla, St. Kitts, Nevis, Barbuda and St. Martin, where residents huddled in churches and schools for hours Tuesday and Wednesday as the storm raged while crawling slowly to the northwest.

Denzil Douglas, prime minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, a pair of tiny islands with about 45,000 residents, had been “devastated” by the storm. “Most of our hospitals . . . have lost their roofs. They have no water or electricity,” he said.

Although the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico seemed to lie in Luis’s path, the storm jogged to the north, and those islands were spared the hurricane’s full fury. Two people in Puerto Rico were reported killed while rushing to prepare for the storm’s arrival.

Although Luis was fully 500 miles wide and generated sustained winds of 130 m.p.h. when it brushed by Puerto Rico’s northeast corner, the eye of the storm stayed well off shore from the densely populated U.S. commonwealth. “Puerto Rico has led a charmed life this year,” Jarrell said.

Trees and power lines were downed, however, and flash-flood warnings were posted.

Forecasters said Puerto Rico could see as much as 10 inches of rain before the last of Luis pulled out of the area today.

Moderate damage was also reported in St. Thomas and on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Jarrell said Puerto Rico was saved from a direct hit from the hurricane when a ridge of low pressure pushed off the U.S. East Coast, formed a crease in the “Bermuda high” over the northern Atlantic, and directed Luis to the northwest. “These storms want to go north if there is nothing to push them west,” he said.

Without that turn to the north, Jarrell said, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands “could have seen an Andrew--or bigger. We would have had many casualties.” Hurricane Andrew, with winds of 145 m.p.h., killed at least 17 people and caused $30 billion in damage when it struck southern Florida in 1992.

In addition to Luis, forecasters were watching yet another wave of low pressure near the coast of Africa, and another system in the Gulf of Mexico that could develop into a tropical storm.