TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/120489/12048900.063

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 10.5 KB | 203 lines

                                                                                TRAVEL, Page 90

Rebuilding Paradise After Hugo


With the high season fast approaching, the battered Caribbean
rushes to be ready

By Nancy Gibbs/ST. CROIX


    What happens to a land beloved for its beauty when the
beauty is ripped away? The northeastern islands of the
Caribbean, ringed by sugary beaches, plush with unlikely
flowers, inspiring rummy tropical dreams, have become the
American paradise. Even the license plates say so. Two months
ago, when Hurricane Hugo mowed across the islands from
Guadeloupe to Puerto Rico, it turned a landscape that was
achingly lovely into one that was painfully bleak. In the case
of St. Croix, where a large bomb could scarcely have done more
damage, the looting and disorder that followed were as
terrifying as the wicked winds. And now, as the high season
approaches, those who love the islands and hope to return are
left wondering: How much paradise was lost?

    An army of insurance adjusters is still taking count, but
most agree the damage figure will top $2 billion and could be
twice that. Roaring from St. John to Puerto Rico, the hurricane
stripped the voluptuous hills of every trace of green; it sent
rooftops cartwheeling down the mountainsides and busted power
lines and telephone poles, leaving the hillsides silent and
dark. Given all this havoc, returning visitors these days will
be amazed to see how quickly, riotously, the vegetation is
growing back and how mightily residents have worked to clean up
the mess.

    But repairing the physical destruction is only the
beginning; next comes the damage control. Dec. 15 marks the
start of the high tourist season, and if tourists do not come
back, neither will the islands. More than 10 million visitors
came last year, leaving behind $7.3 billion. After Hugo,
cancellations poured in, even for destinations not touched by
the storm. "Part of our problem is fighting people's terrible
knowledge of geography," says John Bell, executive vice
president of the Caribbean Hotel Association. "There were groups
dropping out of trips to Aruba and Barbados, which were hundreds
of miles from Hugo's path." So even as an army of workers moved
in, a phalanx of hoteliers and government officials set out to
persuade the travel industry that there would be no trouble in
paradise this winter.

    On the islands that felt the storm's full force, the
recovery is testimony to luck, resilience and private
initiative. Among the few places with electric generators and
food supplies, many hotels offered meals, showers and beds to
the homeless and to relief workers who had come to help. Four
Seasons Hotels sent 27 tons of food, medicine, clothing and
chain saws to Nevis, where its new property is still under
construction. Cruise ships in St. Thomas ferried stranded
tourists out and supplies in. Despite about $10 million in
damage, the luxury Virgin Grand resort on St. John was turned
into a rescue center by general manager Jim St. John. In all he
served about 15,000 meals, provided showers and transformed
$595-a-night rooms into a health clinic that has treated more
than 1,000 people.

    Searching through the debris for blessings in disguise,
hotel owners note that the disaster could have happened in high
season rather than before it. In addition, the tragedy may help
inspire local governments to repair the infrastructure properly,
and then some. "Hugo has done for St. Thomas what nothing else
could," says Hotel Association president Nick Pourzal. "Now they
are planting, landscaping, spending the money to line the
boulevards with bougainvillea. I've been trying to get this done
for 15 years."

    The sprucing up comes not a moment too soon. The resorts
have been losing business to the cruise lines, which account for
some 60% of the traffic to the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tourists
with limited time or money to spend are choosing ships over
land-based resorts as a better value. "The cruise business is
just killing the island resorts," says Jim Cammisa, a
Miami-based travel consultant. "Like it or not, Americans are
not adventurous travelers. The cruise offers clean
accommodations, good food and consistency."

    So hotels have taken advantage of the storm, the insurance
money and the low season to hasten renovations. By the end of
October, most hotels on St. Thomas and St. John were ready for
visitors. While the government boosted its advertising budget
54%, hoteliers even offered guests a money-back guarantee.
"Everyone who comes down now is a town crier," says Tom Bennett
of the St. Thomas-St. John Hotel Association. "We want them to
go back and say how pleased they were."

    But were they?

    The first sight upon landing in St. Thomas is half a DC-3,
broken like a baguette and tossed off to the side of the
runway. Piles of debris remain lumped by the roadside in many
places, but most streets are clear. This does not mean that
traffic is exactly flowing, since stoplights are still broken.
Most places now have electricity, but few have television, and
the phones can be temperamental. But for the tens of thousands
of tourists who tumble out of the cruise ships into Charlotte
Amalie each week, the effects of the storm are almost hidden.
Most of the jewelry shops along Main Street have reopened, to
beguile passengers with special one-time-only sales that never
end. Everywhere there are sounds of rebuilding. At the island's
largest hotel, Frenchman's Reef, the hammering begins at 7:30
a.m., and the wind smells of hot tar. Guests by the pool don't
seem to mind, but then many are insurance adjusters, with a
special interest in heavy equipment.

    Puerto Rico was equally hard hit, particularly on the
islands of Culebra and Vieques. And yet, despite $1.3 billion
in damage, "you can't even tell there was a hurricane here,"
beams tourist Emma Meadows of Richwood, W. Va. Shops and
restaurants are open, highways are clear, and only 400 of the
island's 8,500 rooms are still out of service. The conference
rooms and lobby of the 570-room Condado Plaza have new windows,
carpeting, light fixtures and furniture. Tree surgeons at the
El San Juan are nursing the trademark poolside banyan tree back
to life; the hotel even gained an extra 10 ft. of beach.

    Nature, however, may not repair so quickly. Tourists
venturing east toward El Yunque, the only tropical rain forest
in the U.S. National Forest System, will see the destruction
firsthand. The 40-ft. leafy cathedral that vaulted over the
roads is now open to the sun, and once lush reaches of forest
are bare, broken and brown. In the hardest-hit areas, 60% of the
hardwood trees are gone, including huge mahoganies, and many of
the rare Puerto Rican parrots have disappeared.

    Some islands fared better in part by being prepared. On
British Tortola the storm damaged about one-third of the homes,
but power was back in many places by week's end. Reason: two
years ago, the island began burying utility cables underground,
where they would be less vulnerable in a bad storm. Telephone
and electricity crews were already at work while the winds were
still blowing at 60 m.p.h.; within the week most roads were
clear.

    It would have taken more than luck and preparation,
however, to save St. Croix. The island suffered a cruel beating
during the storm and in the days that followed. Like Montserrat,
it felt the full force of 220-m.p.h. winds, which wiped out 9
out of 10 homes. Unlike Montserrat, it went on to be battered
by national coverage of the looting and gunfire, of terrified
tourists begging to escape. "It never dawned on me that there'd
be looting," says Father Thomas O'Connor, whose parish, St.
Patrick's, is in the heart of ransacked Frederiksted. The
white-haired, blunt-spoken priest speculates on what it all
means. "I think St. Croix, because of its beauty, will always
attract tourists. But it better solve its own internal problems
first. The schools, the hospitals, the infrastructure, the very
fabric of the society has eroded. When St. Croix gets its house
in order, people should come back."

    Residents have suffered terribly since the storm -- and so
has the island's image. Only last week did the last of the
1,100 military police sent down by President Bush withdraw,
replaced by a 150-man unit of the Washington National Guard.
Governor Alexander Farrelly, who after two months had yet to
spend a night on the ravaged island, defends the move. "If we're
talking about getting back on the tourist track," he says, "it
doesn't become us to have an image of St. Croix as an island
inhabited by soldiers."

    Safe or not, St. Croix will simply not be ready for most
tourists this winter. Power and phone service will not be
restored until January at the earliest, and less than half of
the 1,755 hotel rooms are usable. Many shops in Christiansted
are still boarded, if there is anything left to board. "I want
to see the tourists come back as much as anyone," says developer
Jack Caldwell, "but to bring them down this winter would do more
harm than good."

    That said, the adventurous traveler, forewarned and content
to be inconvenienced, will find plenty to see. Divers report a
whole new underwater landscape to be explored. "The American
public is not wimpish," says Leona Bryant, the government's
director of tourism. "They're accustomed to disaster and
adventure. You find people coming to gawk." Or if not to gawk,
perhaps to listen and learn. "There's a camaraderie among people
now," says Margery Boulanger, headmaster of St. Croix Country
Day School, where the damage gave a whole new meaning to the
notion of the open classroom. "Standing in line together,
filling out forms, waiting for ice. I'd be surprised if tourists
had a bad experience because of the hurricane."

    A fair number of businessmen, at least, are willling to bet
that she's right. Ritz-Carlton is proceeding with plans for a
$140 million hotel on St. Croix scheduled to open in late 1992.
Great Pond Bay Resorts just won approval for a $250 million
project with 350 hotel rooms and 600 condos. If the islands all
do struggle back, it may be because in the end Hugo could not
destroy what most people come to the Caribbean to find. It could
not make the sea less bright or the sun less clear, or bestir
the starfish or break the spirits of the islands' hosts. The
present flurry of activity may be at odds with the placid island
tempo, but it reflects that most precious tourist commodity: the
desire to please.