By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 1995; Page A8

Hurricane Marilyn pummeled Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands early yesterday morning with torrential rains and winds reaching 127 mph, destroying scores of buildings, knocking out fresh water supplies and sending thousands of residents scurrying for shelter.

Federal officials reported three people dead, dozens missing and hundreds injured, some critically, on the island of St. Thomas, which was hardest hit. Between 70 percent and 80 percent of structures on St. Thomas were either destroyed or damaged, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency officials.

"It's a real bad scene, about as bad as you can picture," said FEMA spokesman Morrie Goodman.

Federal relief officials reported looting and unrest on all three of the main islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands, including St. Croix, where most businesses were sacked by looters after Hurricane Hugo wrecked the island in 1989.

Marilyn moved away from the Caribbean region later in the day, and all hurricane and storm watches were canceled.

President Clinton yesterday declared Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands federal disaster areas, clearing the way for massive relief efforts and making residents eligible for emergency financial aid.

Marilyn, with forceful winds swirling 140 miles out from its eye, is the fourth strong tropical storm to hit the Caribbean in 30 days. Many residents had just mopped up damage caused by Hurricane Luis, which pounded the island with 140 mph winds last week.

"We've been hit very badly," said Del. Victor O. Frazer (I), who represents the Virgin Islands in Congress, after speaking to the islands' governor, Roy L. Schneider, on a satellite telephone from Washington. "There's a lot of property damage, things like blown off roofs and fallen trees, as well as quite a few injuries."

At least 12 people were hurt in the collapse of the four-building Tower Apartment complex in the capital, Charlotte Amalie, and 40 to 50 more were believed trapped inside, said FEMA Director James Lee Witt.

Two 60-person search-and-rescue teams from Montgomery County and New York City, which specialize in locating and extricating people in collapsed structures, were being dispatched to St. Thomas.

Emergency crews, which left for the islands last evening, planned to set up mobile hospitals and airlift the wounded to hospitals in Puerto Rico because St. Thomas's only hospital was severely damaged, Witt said.

Hurricane Marilyn followed, at least in part, the trail of Hurricane Hugo in 1989: Both smacked the Virgin Islands, where Hugo had destroyed about 90 percent of the buildings on St. Croix and nearly all of them on the tiny island of Culebra, Puerto Rico, about 20 miles east of the mainland. The scene in Culebra yesterday was ominously familiar.

"There are houses down everywhere. The roads are washed out. A lot of boats are all over the place," a Culebra resident told a local radio station yesterday, the Associated Press reported. "The island is devastated."

FEMA's Goodman said an estimated 400 of the 1,000 houses on Culebra, with a population of 3,000, were destroyed. "This appears to be a whole lot worse than Hugo," Frazer said.

On St. Thomas, phone service and electricity were cut off to the 50,000 residents. Cars and boats were swept from their parking spaces by 12-foot-high waves and flash flooding. Mudslides and fallen trees littered many roads, FEMA officials said.

Schneider asked federal officials for military police to patrol St. Croix and St. Thomas, Frazer said. The Justice Department said a team of fewer than 10 FBI agents was being sent to assist Schneider.

Last evening, FEMA officials said the first of 30 military planes loaded with tons of supplies had begun landing in the islands. The National Airborne Operations Center, a specially outfitted Boeing 747 was scheduled to leave Andrews Air Force Base last night for St. Croix as a command center for relief operations.

Relief efforts were hampered by a lack of phone service, lingering squalls and tons of debris that littered roads and the airports on St. Thomas and St. Croix, where the storm damaged control towers.

Marilyn moved away from the Caribbean region later in the day. At 11p.m., Marilyn was about 140 miles north-northwest of San Juan, drifting into the open Atlantic.

A low-pressure system is expected to turn the storm northward today, avoiding the U.S. mainland, said Brian Maher, a forecaster with the National Hurricane Center in Miami. "Right now it's a little too early say if the continental United States is completely out of the woods as yet. But it's looking like this storm is going to steer clear from any more land masses."

The storm hit St. Croix, a 78-square-mile island with about 50,000 residents, late Friday evening, causing moderate property damage. After increasing its strength, it whipped though St. Thomas with winds reaching 127 mph, Maher said.

Staff writer Brian Mooar contributed to this report.