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On St. Thomas, A Paradise Is Whisked AwayHurricane Death Toll Reaches 8; Officials Say One-Quarter of Houses Are DestroyedBy Brian MooarWashington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 18, 1995; Page A01 © The Washington Post CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS, SEPT. 17 -- The death toll from Hurricane Marilyn rose to eight today as residents of storm-battered St. Thomas attempted to pick up the pieces before beginning to rebuild with federal help. At least 80 people were injured, although authorities said the number could be higher because the only form of distant communication was by cellular telephone, and those phone links were jammed with calls. Travel was hindered by impassable tangles of downed utility lines and snapped poles, but after electricity was restored at the airport this afternoon, a planeload of U.S. tourists left for home. At the collapsed Towers Condominium complex, where officials had feared as many as 50 people may have been trapped, residents had fled the building before it began to tumble. None remained pinned in the wreckage, which prompted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to rescind its call for assistance from the Montgomery County and New York City urban search and rescue teams. Denise Mills, 30, appeared stunned as she picked through the wreckage of what had been her apartment at the Towers. "To me, St. Thomas is gone. Look around. Look. "My mother's roof is gone, my grandmother's roof is gone. There's no place to go." Mills said her son Brian, 2, was traumatized by the disaster that destroyed their home and kept repeating, " Mash up, Mommy, mash up.' Everything is broken." Virgin Islands Gov. Roy L. Schneider said the 48,000 residents of St. Thomas were pulling together in a time of tragedy. "My personal house, I lost everything. Just blew away like paper," Schneider said. "The governor's mansion is also destroyed." FEMA officials said 25 percent of the houses on St. Thomas were destroyed and the rest damaged. "If you look around the island, it might look like we were hit by bombs," the governor said. Island officials said Attorney General Janet Reno had granted Schneider's request for more than 100 federal law enforcement officers to supplement the island's security forces following reports of looting. Military cargo planes arrived at the shattered airport with relief workers, water, food, blankets, tents, 10,000 AM radios and 20,000 batteries. More than two dozen boats, heaved from marinas at the height of the storm Friday night, remained stranded on sidewalks and streets. A U.S. Coast Guard cutter was listing on a downtown pier. Authorities said the three confirmed deaths on St. Thomas occurred on boats that were tossed ashore. Officials said there were two confirmed deaths on St. Croix, which was relatively unscathed by the storm, and one on St. John. Earlier, a man was electrocuted when he tried to remove a television antenna on a house in Puerto Rico in preparation for the hurricane, and authorities said today they had recovered the body of a Culebra, Puerto Rico, man who drowned when he tried to outrun the storm in a sailboat. Michael and Debi Boerckel of Anne Arundel County had hoped to relax in St. Thomas as they celebrated their sixth wedding anniversary and scouted for a place to start a bed and breakfast. On Friday night, they took shelter in a bug-infested cistern as Marilyn churned outside. "We've been down here five weeks, this is our second hurricane, and we've prayed away five other storms," Michael Boerckel said. Tonight, Hurricane Marilyn spun harmlessly in the Atlantic on a path that forecasters said would take it between the U.S. mainland and Bermuda without posing a major threat. On one of the FEMA-chartered flights home tonight were Cary and Laura Beach of Pittsburgh, who had come here on a delayed honeymoon. He was running out of insulin for his diabetes, and his wife pleaded with FEMA officials to get them off the island. But Laura Beach will not have fond memories of an idyllic visit to a tropical paradise. "I hate this place and I'm never coming back here as long as I live," she said today. St. Thomas residents who survived Hurricane Hugo in 1989 said they believed Marilyn, which had winds gusting to 127 mph when it hit here Friday, was far worse. Many residents said they had been lulled into complacency after Hurricane Luis, which pummeled some of the Leeward Islands last week, only gently brushed the U.S. Virgins. But islanders said they had stocked up on canned goods and water or removed valuable items from their shops, just in case. Special correspondent Carl Ross contributed to this report.
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