Hurricane Luis Leaves St. Martin Short of Water, Food

Food and water were in short supply Sunday as residents hammered together makeshift shelters and desperate tourists scrambled to leave this hurricane-shattered Caribbean playground.

Nearly a week after wreaking havoc on the tiny islands of the northeastern Caribbean, Hurricane Luis weakened as it moved into the north Atlantic.

But for the people of the hard-hit Lesser Antilles, the storm is far from over.

On the Dutch-French island of St. Martin, residents scavenged sheets of plywood, zinc and corrugated iron and nailed them into place over the bare walls of ruined houses, fashioning crude shelters from their storm-tossed homes.

In Philipsburg, Gayale Beralone cut up a chicken in her kitchen, the only room of her home left intact by Hurricane Luis. “This is the last food,” she said.

Thousands of tourists, stranded for days on an island with no electricity, little running water and sporadic phone service, crowded the airport hoping to get one of the infrequent charters out.

“There’s no food, no water. It’s terrible,” said one U.S. tourist as she got off a charter flight in Miami.

Some of those who left the island said the smell of death hung in the air. Although authorities have put the storm’s toll at nine, they acknowledge that many more bodies may be buried in debris and in overturned boats.

Throughout the islands, the most powerful hurricane of the 1995 Atlantic season is blamed for at least 15 deaths and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, the worst of it on St. Martin and Antigua.

Authorities said Sunday that widespread looting that broke out immediately following the storm had been quelled. Traffic was chaotic as workers took to the streets to begin clearing debris and garbage.

Luis weakened on Sunday as it spun through the north Atlantic, brushing New England and Canada’s maritime provinces. Heavy swells pushed by the storm caused beach erosion along the eastern seaboard.

At 8 a.m. PDT Sunday, the center of Luis was about 315 miles south-southwest of Sable Island, Nova Scotia, and was moving northeast at 32 m.p.h.

On that track, the storm was expected to move over southeastern Newfoundland before sunrise today. Maximum winds were near 100 m.p.h. but were likely to diminish by today, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center said.

High wind warnings were in effect for southeastern areas of Newfoundland.