St. Thomas: Looking for Signs of Paradise : Caribbean: Residents fear that recovery from hurricane damage on the remote tourism-dependent island could take years, not months.

There is trouble in paradise. Big trouble.

Six days after Hurricane Marilyn smashed this remote vacation haven into rubble, officials of the U.S. territory insisted that at least some of the critical winter tourist season can be salvaged from the ruins of what had been a $1-billion-a-year industry. But even as planeloads of food, water and disaster teams are arriving, both stunned residents and tourism experts voiced fears that major economic recovery could take years, not months.

“What are we going to show people?” asked Carlyle Small, an exasperated, 55-year-old taxi driver who had just spent four hours in a line to buy gasoline. “It’s like an atomic blast here.”

At a time when Charlotte Amalie shopkeepers normally are restocking souvenir conch shells and duty-free liquors, they instead are shoveling out debris and lining up for drinking water. In what is normally the Caribbean’s busiest cruise ship port, private yachts and even a 92-foot Coast Guard ship are strewn like toys along waterfront streets.

On St. Thomas alone, an estimated 12,000 people have been left homeless by Marilyn, which caused at least 11 deaths as it roared through the Caribbean days after Hurricane Luis blasted St. Martin, Antigua and Anguilla.

There is no electricity here, no overseas telephone service, barely a building on the island with an intact roof or uncracked wall. Most hotels are closed and any guest rooms with four walls have been occupied by emergency crews.

There are no tourists here and no cruise ships on the horizon. “I can’t even estimate what the winter season will be, but it will not be what it was in the past,” said Michael Marden, legal counsel to Virgin Islands Gov. Roy L. Schneider. “Can we recover in time to have a season this year? If we don’t, the economic damage will be equal to the physical damage Marilyn did. We are 85% dependent on tourism. It’s a one-horse industry. And if tourism shuts down, there is nothing else left.”

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St. Croix and tiny St. John’s make up the other two-thirds of what is called “American paradise” on local license plates. St. Croix seems poised to pick up some of the tourism slack. With less damage from Marilyn, it already has seen some power restored and cleanup is under way. After a company representative visited the island Thursday, Miami-based Carnival Cruise Lines announced that two ships would call at Frederiksted during the first week of October.

But Charlotte Amalie, the Virgin Islands’ capital on St. Thomas’ south coast, lies in twisted pieces and it is the engine that drives the economy of the territory, which has a population of 114,000. According to a report published by Price Waterhouse, the accounting firm, the total economic impact of cruise ship business on Charlotte Amalie alone, including direct expenditures by tourists, tourism employees and suppliers, amounted to $881.3 million last year.

Employment on St. Thomas directly related to cruise ship visitors accounted for 8,932 full-time jobs, plus 5,000 more jobs through spinoffs, the report said.

“Recovery is going to take several years--easily,” said Dale Mathews, an economist with the Institute of Caribbean Studies at the University of Puerto Rico. “Not just rebuilding hotels, but marinas have to be cleared of sunken boats. And water has always been a problem on the islands.”

To understand the extent of the destruction on St. Thomas, the hardest hit of several Leeward Islands raked by four hurricanes within a tempestuous four-week period this year, it is necessary only to drive five miles from the stricken airport--where a storm-altered sign welcomes visitors with a prayer-like “ST. --OM--”--to downtown Charlotte Amalie.

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What was once one of the prettiest, most verdant routes in the Caribbean is now a treacherous obstacle course of downed poles and trees, dangling power lines, traffic snarled from queues at working gas stations and snarling, short-tempered motorists. In what was once a lush, tropical garden, every leaf seems to have been stripped from every tree, leaving the usually deep green hillsides barren and brown.

Looting broke out in the aftermath of the hurricane but Virgin Islands National Guard troops, along with U.S. marshals, have restored order. Police Commissioner Ramon Davila said that a dusk-to-dawn curfew would remain in effect and that police roadblocks are in place throughout the island.

“Everyone is so uptight now; one little thing, you break,” said Deanna Smith, a spokeswoman for St. Thomas Hospital, which is treating some patients in a field tent pitched on the lawn after Marilyn’s 120-m.p.h. winds blew out windows on two floors. “People haven’t slept. They’re shellshocked.”

After about 1,700 tourists stranded by the hurricane were flown off the island this week, scores of disaster coordinators from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the American Red Cross, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies moved into the battered Marriott resort, Frenchman’s Reef, to direct the recovery operation. Schneider, an oncologist whose own mansion was severely damaged, has also moved into the hotel.

Three emergency centers have opened on the island, where volunteers hand out MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), plastic sheeting for roof repairs and small battery-powered radios.

Military transport planes arrive hourly with food and water--more than 1 million tons so far--but FEMA spokeswoman Pam Johnson said that there are not enough trucks on the island to distribute it.

St. Thomas’ isolation and its lack of infrastructure make the prospects for a speedy recovery grim. “People are resigned to six months without electricity,” Johnson said.

Although American Airlines has begun to fly hourly shuttles between San Juan and Charlotte Amalie, without power the airport is unable to operate after dark, or to run its computers or radar. A SWAT team from Miami patrols the airport and directs the lineup of passengers waiting to leave.

Some phones are working, and radio station WSTA, with an emergency generator, is broadcasting.

The damage here is comparable to that inflicted on parts of South Florida by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. But in South Florida, convoys of trucks with supplies and relief workers could drive in on Interstate 95 and the victims could use the same road to drive 25 miles to a restaurant, a grocery store or an air-conditioned theater.

On St. Thomas, now 32 square miles of destruction, there is no escape route.