Hurricane Rams Virgin Islands; 3 Dead, 100 Hurt

Less than two weeks after dodging a bullet named Luis, the U.S. Virgin Islands and parts of Puerto Rico took a direct hit early Saturday from Hurricane Marilyn, a powerful, compact storm that destroyed homes, ripped up trees and left tens of thousands of people without electricity or telephone service.

Three people were reported dead on the resort island of St. Thomas, and 100 were injured. About half of those injured were reportedly trapped inside a collapsed apartment building complex in Charlotte Amalie, the Virgin Islands capital, according to officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington.

FEMA Director James Lee Witt activated 18 disaster relief teams, including two urban search-and-rescue squads, and ordered them to St. Thomas. “It was assumed that there’s still 40 or 50 people inside those buildings,” Witt said.

FEMA officials said late Saturday night that there were some reports of looting and rioting.

Also hit hard by Marilyn’s 110-m.p.h. winds were two islands off Puerto Rico’s east coast, Culebra and Vieques, as well as St. Croix, which was devastated by Hurricane Hugo six years ago. Six people were reported missing after waves as high as 12 feet sank two fishing boats off St. Croix, one of three islands that along with St. Thomas and St. John make up the U.S. Virgin Islands, called “an American paradise.”

President Clinton declared Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands disaster areas, making them eligible for emergency aid.

Estimates of damage remained sketchy because communication links to most of the area were cut and debris-littered airports were closed. But in a report to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, the crew of an Air Force reconnaissance plane that flew over St. Thomas on Saturday observed: “Airport is wrecked. Marina east of airport is wrecked. Tanker-type ship is on the beach. Much litter in the hills.”

A police officer told the newspaper El Nuevo Dia that “the island is totally destroyed.”

The first pictures to come out of St. Thomas showed a wasteland of debris, downed trees, beached and sunken vessels, and roofless houses crumbling in the rain. Thousands of people were reported homeless.

In Washington, Victor Frazer, the Virgin Islands’ delegate to Congress, received a stunning damage report from Gov. Roy L. Schneider. “His preliminary assessment is 70% to 80% damage to the island,” Frazer said.

The windows of the top two floors in a St. Thomas hospital were blown out and the hospital was flooded. More than 100 patients were to be evacuated to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The storm also blew out glass in the control tower at the island’s airport, which was closed to all but emergency and military flights.

A Coast Guard cutter was blown onto the road.

Schneider requested military police for both St. Thomas and St. Croix, although no looting had been reported. Teams of FBI agents were also being dispatched to the territory, which has a population of more than 150,000.

On St. Croix, the last word to come from the island before all power was lost Friday was from Lt. Gov. Kenneth Mapp, who said the roof of his bunker was collapsing.

Compared to Hurricane Luis, blamed for 12 deaths on five islands last week, Marilyn was smaller and weaker. Luis had top winds of 140 m.p.h. when it smashed into Antigua and St. Martin.

But Marilyn, intensifying as it moved northwest, seemed to pick its spots, brushing by Barbados and then rolling upward through many of the same Leeward Islands battered last week.

Marilyn, the fourth storm to strike the eastern Caribbean in as many weeks, skirted north of San Juan just before dawn Saturday, causing minimal damage in the Puerto Rican capital. And even while Marilyn strengthened to sustained winds of 115 m.p.h., forecasters predicted an eventual turn to the north that would keep it away from the Bahamas and the U.S. East Coast.

After leaving Barbados as a minimal hurricane Wednesday, the storm crossed Dominica and its winds reached more than 100 m.p.h., before it slammed into St. Croix on Friday. There, on the island virtually flattened by Hugo in 1989, Marilyn tore roofs from houses, knocked down the radio tower of WSTX, the island’s main station, and piled up pleasure boats in the harbors.

Next to get clobbered were Vieques and Culebra. Callers who got through to San Juan radio stations reported heavy wind damage to homes, roads and boats.

“Have you ever been in a blender?” asked police Lt. Julio Soto. “That’s how we felt.”

Soto said winds had lifted two light aircraft from Culebra’s airport and tossed them onto the roof of the nearby Happy Landings restaurant. He estimated that at least 200 tin-roofed houses had been destroyed on the island, on which 3,000 people live, most in poorly constructed homes.

Lesser damage was reported on Puerto Rico, where Gov. Pedro Rossello had declared a disaster even before the storm hit.

About 11,000 people spent Friday night in public shelters in Puerto Rico, and about 200,000 others lost electrical power.

Times wire services contributed to this story.