THE VALLEY, Anguilla (AP) -- Hurricane Lenny loomed off a string of Dutch and British Caribbean islands today after slamming its 150-mph winds against St. Croix, where it flung boats onto the beach, flooded roads and homes and tore away a pier.
The late-season storm has killed at least four people from Colombia to Dutch St. Maarten in the northeast Caribbean.On Tuesday, two fishermen drowned off Colombia's Caribbean peninsula, and rains destroyed half of a coastal village, leaving 540 people homeless.
One man died in the Puerto Rican capital, San Juan, after he fell off a ladder as he tried to board up windows. A man in St. Maarten died Wednesday when the garden wall of his hillside home collapsed on him.
The hurricane was unlikely to strike the mainland United States, said meteorologist Stacy Stewart at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. He cautioned, however, that Lenny still could bring heavy surf capable of eroding beaches in Florida.
"The influence of this storm is going to be felt considerable distances away," he said.
In St. Croix, an unidentified tourist who ventured out of a hotel to see the rising surf was carried away by waves and had to cling to a rock for more than an hour before local divers rescued him, said Gov. Charles Turnbull of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Even before the hurricane arrived, storm surges that whipped up 12-foot waves stripped sand from Anguilla's famous beaches. The beaches, which attract the tourists who provide the British island's biggest source of revenue, already had been damaged by Hurricane Jose last month.
Nearly 100 tourists had to be evacuated from a flooded hotel to another hotel on higher ground in Anguilla.
Hurricane Lenny has a seemingly backward trajectory from west to east that surprised even seasoned forecasters.
Feeding off the warm Caribbean waters, Lenny's winds strengthened for a while to 150 mph Wednesday, just 5 mph short of being a Category 5 hurricane, the strongest hurricane rating. Category 5 hurricanes can cause catastrophic damage.
By this morning, Lenny's winds had weakened to 135 mph. At 7 a.m., the eye of the storm was 35 miles west-southwest of St. Maarten. It was expected to move slowly east-northeastward on a trajectory that would take it over St. Maarten, Saba and Anguilla, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
In San Juan, a few motorists speeded down highways usually choked with traffic and tooted their horns with delight that the storm, which zigzagged on a course that confounded meteorologists, had missed them. But nearly 100,000 people remained without water or electricity Wednesday night.
Anguilla was drenched by 4 to 6 inches of rain in four hours Wednesday afternoon, and its beaches were eroded by sea swells of up to 12 feet throughout the day.
The storm's first winds cut power and telephone service to many homes in St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The hurricane ripped up trees and unleashed a steady rain that flooded large areas.
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency sent medical teams to the Virgin Islands ahead of the storm. The agency's director, James Lee Witt, told reporters that damage assessors would fly in today.
He said that while the hurricane damaged roofs, including that of the national armory, he did not expect widespread damage because FEMA had helped the government institute new hurricane building codes after Hurricane Marilyn devastated the islands in 1995.
The territory has a $1 billion debt and still owes $8 million for federal disaster loans from Hurricane Marilyn and Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
Waves smashed over the 8-foot sea wall at Frederiksted, the second-largest town on the island, tearing away the wooden pier that was the fish market and a small part of the concrete pier where cruise ships dock.
In Christiansted, St. Croix's main town, the boardwalk was submerged, and winds tore part of the roof off the newly renovated King Christian Hotel.
The storm beached and sunk boats from Aruba, off Venezuela's coast in South America, to Grenada and St. Kitts.
On St. Kitts' concrete pier, a half dozen people suffered fractures and other injuries when they were hit by waves. Storm surges in Grenada swept away four houses, washed away asphalt roads, damaged runway lights at the airport and flooded roads and the business district.
Turnbull said Wednesday he was waiting for President Clinton to declare St. Croix a disaster area, making it eligible for federal emergency funds.