A Monster from the Caribbean

One of the century's wildest hurricanes turns tame over Texas

Its itinerary sounded like something drawn up by a Caribbean cruise director: Barbados and St. Lucia, Haiti and Jamaica, Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and the U.S. Gulf Coast. But the voyage left shattering death and destruction in its wake. Hurricane Allen brought savage 185 m.p.h. winds and 20-ft. waves. It wiped out most of the Caribbean banana crop, demolished thousands of homes and killed more than 100 people before its final landfall in Texas. Said Noel Risnychok, a meteorologist at Miami's National Hurricane Center, as the winds scythed through the normally placid Caribbean: "Allen has the potential to be the most devastating storm of the century."

That record was set by a hurricane that smashed through the Caribbean to the Florida Keys on Labor Day 1935 and claimed 408 lives. Late last week, a weather reconnaissance plane flew into Allen's eye and discovered a stunningly low barometric reading of 899 millibars--perilously close to the 892 level of 1935. Allen's monstrous wall clouds, the most powerful part of a hurricane, reached out 70 miles from the eye. Whether the worst storm of the past 80 years or merely the second worst, Allen was one for the record books. A long Caribbean heat wave gave the hurricane particular ferocity, and forecasters fear that similar storms may follow until season's end in November.

Allen ran past Barbados, but the island of St. Lucia caught its full force. In Haiti Allen destroyed virtually the entire coffee crop, a major source of income for the impoverished island, and killed at least 50. Before the hurricane cut across Jamaica, Prime Minister Michael Manley pleaded on national radio: "I ask for God's blessing for this night." Though western Cuba was barely scratched, the storm battered nearby Isla Juventud, where 25,000 teen-agers from Third World countries are studying on Cuban scholarships, then swiped at the Yucatan.

Warned that Allen was nearing, Texans from Brownsville to Galveston frantically boarded up their homes and shops and 200,000 people fled coastal areas. Hardware stores sold out of batteries, candles, masking tape and flashlights. Canned goods and bottled water disappeared from grocery shelves. Hotels inland were booked to capacity.

Along the U.S. Gulf Coast, boats, helicopters and other rescue vehicles went on alert. Some 4,500 workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs. On one mission, a helicopter crashed, killing 13. For all the warnings, a few stubborn Texans refused to move from the path of the oncoming storm. "It's been 19 years since a hurricane crossed the coast," said Cecil Palmer of the National Weather Service's Houston office. "We have many newcomers who don't know what a hurricane is all about and many oldtimers who feel, 'Well, I rode it out before and I can do it again.' "

The obstinate oldtimers were right. Stalling off Brownsville for several hours on Saturday night, Allen lost much of its punch. Once the hurricane reached land and was no longer fueled by sea moisture, it rapidly subsided. Winds in Brownsville were less than 80 m.p.h. "Now it's just a ferocious little thunderstorm," said a National Weather Service spokesman.

Damage was nowhere near as severe as expected. In south Texas cities, streets were strewn with uprooted trees, downed power lines and splintered billboards. But most buildings were still standing. Torrential rains of 15 to 20 inches caused serious flooding in central Texas and destroyed some $400 million in crops, especially cotton. But the downpour also brought desperately needed moisture after a month-long drought.

According to early estimates, Allen caused no deaths in the U.S. "Everybody really jumped and left," said National Hurricane Forecaster Gil Clark. "There is not much chance of loss of life unless someone stayed down on one of the beaches." For a while, a tanker grounded by the storm 12 miles off the coast looked as if it would break up and spill its cargo of 11.8 million gallons of crude oil into the high seas. But the vessel appeared to be riding out the storm. "God was good to us," said Eddie Gonzales, a deputy sheriff in Brownsville, as the storm spent itself over sparsely populated range land. "It's as simple as that."

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