THE VALLEY, Anguilla (AP) --With devastating winds and deadly downpours, Hurricane Lenny struck the northeast Caribbean today, ripping sand away from beaches, flooding hotels and endangering the tourism lifeblood of a string of British, French and Dutch islands.
Storm-weary islanders took shelter for hours in boarded-up homes as the storm's winds howled by, ripping away roofs and piers, washing away roads and cutting electricity and telephone service.The already economically depressed islands faced the loss of a potentially promising tourist season that officially started Monday.
President Clinton on Thursday declared a state of emergency in the U.S. Virgin Islands, allowing residents to apply for federal financial aid.
Lenny, a late-season storm, has killed at least seven people and left three others missing from Colombia to Dutch St. Maarten in the northeast Caribbean. It rattled nerves throughout the region as it zigzagged along a rare west-to-east course before stalling off St. Maarten on Thursday and hovering in the area early today.
The U.S. National Weather Service said Lenny was "wreaking havoc on St. Maarten and adjacent islands." Before the eye of the storm crossed the island, there were reports of severe damage, the weather service said.
Lenny whipped up powerful waves that pounded St. Maarten's main port, said a reporter at GVBC Radio of St. Maarten. He said the storm was "flinging shipping containers about like toys." Then the telephone connection went dead.
"We are in a very dangerous situation," St. Maarten's Lt. Gov. Dennis Richardson said Thursday. "We expect conditions to get a lot worse."
Lenny whipped up winds up to 150 mph on Wednesday when it battered the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Croix for 12 hours. The storm ripped roofs from some homes, flooded buildings and roads and tore away a pier. Boats were strewn like debris across the beach at the yacht club, some piled on top of each other.
With winds still at 135 mph, Lenny then moved to St. Martin, the island shared by French St. Martin and Dutch St. Maarten, pounding it for hours. By early today, the hurricane's winds dropped to 100 mph. Its eye passed St. Maarten, made a hit on Anguilla, a British territory, and was hovering near the island of St. Barthelemey.
Forecasters expected up to 15 inches of rain on islands already saturated from more than a week of downpours.
The storm was projected to start a slow move to the northeast today into the open Atlantic. Hurricane winds stretched 35 miles from the eye with tropical storm-force extending another 145 miles, many times larger than the tiny islands Lenny threatened.
The hurricane was unlikely to strike the mainland United States but could bring heavy surf capable of eroding beaches in Florida, hundreds of miles away, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
The storm has caused havoc as far afield as South America. On Tuesday, it drowned two fishermen off Colombia's Caribbean peninsula, and its relentless rains destroyed half a coastal village, leaving 540 people homeless.
The storm beached and sank boats from Aruba, off Venezuela's coast, to Dominica in the east-central Caribbean. In St. Lucia, some houses were washed away and a gasoline station was set ablaze when pounding waves caused a short-circuit that ignited kerosene.
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, said damage assessors were flying in.