TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/100289/10028900.021

Text File | 1990-09-18 | 3KB | 53 lines

NATION, Page 18

Anarchy in Paradise


    It was an act of God that devastated St. Croix last week,
blowing houses into splinters, closing down the hospital, shutting
off water and electricity, leaving residents and tourists in a
state of panic. But the island's second wave of destruction was the
work of man. When the skies cleared, locals armed with rifles, guns
and machetes plundered the ravaged streets of Christiansted and
Frederiksted, helping themselves not just to necessities like food
and water but also to TV sets, liquor and clothing. As days passed
and no outside help came, the looting spread. Thieves browsed
through merchandise, trying on sneakers to get the right size.
Stores not smashed by the storm were vandalized by hooligans.
Lonnie and Elena Scribner, honeymooning on the island, watched as
islanders roamed through the debris grabbing whatever they could
carry. Gunfire could be heard throughout both cities.

    Instead of trying to restore order, local police and National
Guardsmen apparently joined in, carting off garbage bags full of
booty. British tourist Simon Schiller said he watched while a St.
Croix policeman drove straight through the center of the violence
in Christiansted with a brand-new refrigerator, still in its
carton, in the back of his truck. To add to the chaos, when the
hurricane buffeted a local prison, 200 inmates escaped and joined
the free-for-all.

    The post-Hugo damage to St. Croix might have been less if
protecting the island's image had not been deemed more important
than protecting the island itself. Tourism is St. Croix's largest
industry, and officials evidently feared that a revival of racial
tensions could cause almost as much harm as Hugo. Memories still
linger of 1972, when eight people (seven of them white) were
murdered on a golf course by gun-toting black leftists. Virgin
Islands Governor Alexander Farrelly, who stayed on St. Thomas, 37
miles away, insisted that reports of lawlessness were distorted and
exaggerated. Witnesses, he said, may have mistaken looters for
police and guardsmen because they were wearing stolen uniforms and
driving hijacked vehicles. Farrelly delayed asking for help until
it became clear that Washington was going to send troops whether
he wanted them or not.

    On Wednesday a Coast Guard patrol of St. Croix reported "a
complete breakdown of authority," and six cutters headed for the
island to evacuate panicked vacationers. But the restoration of
order did not begin until Thursday with the arrival of 1,200 U.S.
military police, federal marshals and FBI agents -- the first time
Army troops have been used to quell a civil disturbance since the
riots in Washington following the assassination of the Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr. in 1968. Most of the escaped prisoners have been
recaptured. What little there is left to protect is being guarded.
St. Croix may have been reduced to the primitive, but civilization
has returned.