Residents Prepare as Erika Bears Down on Caribbean

Caribbean island residents hauled their boats from the water, boarded up houses and businesses, jammed gas stations and rushed to buy emergency supplies Friday as Hurricane Erika churned across the Atlantic toward Antigua and volcano-ravaged Montserrat with 75-mph winds and torrential rains.

“We pulled all the boats out, battened down the house and bought a bottle of rum,” said Ellis Chaderton, owner of a dive shop on the island of Nevis.

Erika, which formed Wednesday and grew to hurricane strength early Friday, was expected to hit the northeastern Caribbean--Antigua, Montserrat, Barbuda, Nevis, St. Kitts, Anguilla, St. Barthelemy and Dutch and French St. Martin--by this afternoon. Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands could see hurricane conditions by Sunday morning.

“I’m scared,” Irene Riley said on Montserrat, where shelters already were overcrowded with people forced from their homes by eruptions from the island’s volcano. “I’m just prepared to get rid of some of my personal stuff and head out of Montserrat.”

She and her three children live in a wooden house moved from the volcano evacuation zone and set down without supports in a park that gets flooded even in a minor thunderstorm.

Friday night, Erika was about 175 miles east of Antigua, moving west-northwest at 12 mph.

Its motion was expected to continue through this morning, placing its center near the northeastern Leeward Islands.

Schools on both Antigua and Barbuda were ordered schools to close at noon.

“It could be very, very close to Antigua, five or 10 miles if the system continues its projected direction,” forecaster Andy Roche said from the U.S. National Weather Service bureau in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

But Erika already has surprised forecasters. Three hours before its winds reached hurricane strength of 74 mph Friday morning, little change had been expected in its strength for 24 hours.

The first two weeks of September are usually the busiest part of the Atlantic hurricane season. Before Erika became a tropical storm Wednesday, more than a month had passed without a named storm or depression.

In July, Hurricane Danny caused severe flooding and scattered damage along the coast of Louisiana and Alabama before moving inland as a tropical storm and drenching other Southern states.

The islands of the north and eastern Caribbean are frequently hit by hurricanes that march off the west coast of Africa.

Hurricane Marilyn hit the U.S. Virgin Islands in September 1995, and Hurricane Hortense unleashed deadly floods and mudslides in Puerto Rico last September.

Hurricane Hugo caused catastrophic damage in the Caribbean in 1989, damaging 90% of the buildings in Montserrat alone.

“We have lots of rope, chain saws and first aid kits. For the rest of it, you just wait and have a good time,” Chaderton said. “After Hugo, all of the others are just jokes.”

Schools and churches in Nevis were prepared as shelters, but residents did not seem overly concerned by Erika. Nevis Express airline canceled flights and sent its two nine-seater planes to St. Lucia, and cruise companies sent their ships out to sea to ride out the storm.