It Was No Breeze

By Richard Stengel

On the satellite pictures it resembled a living creature, angrily swirling and pulsing, a one-eyed monster of awesome dimensions. In a vortex of turbulent weather spanning 450 miles, the whirling body of the hurricane seemed to have a mind and will of its own as it marched across the Caribbean, devastating almost everything in its path.

Hurricane Gilbert uprooted not only trees but lives. It chewed across the length of Jamaica, leaving 500,000 people homeless, and virtually destroying the island's economy. It slammed into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, shattering the glassy facades of tourist hotels and destroying the homes of 30,000 residents. By the time Gilbert touched the trembling but well-prepared Gulf coast, its epic force had been muted. Still, flooding and high tides swamped beaches and highways and forced more than 100,000 people in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi to flee in anticipation of its virulence.

Belying its mild-sounding name, Gilbert became unique as a force -- the most powerful storm to hit the western hemisphere in this century. Its counterclockwise wind speed peaked at an estimated 200 m.p.h. at 10,000 ft. and 175 m.p.h. at ground level; its 26.13-in. barometric pressure was the lowest ever recorded. Gilbert was blamed for at least 100 deaths and billions of dollars in damage in the Caribbean and Mexico. An additional 200 people . were feared drowned after a rain-swollen river jumped its banks and overturned four buses Saturday in Monterrey, Mexico. But highly accurate tracking and early warnings prevented more widespread loss of life. The storm ranked well below the toll of recent killer hurricanes like David (1,100 deaths in 1979) and Flora (7,200 deaths in 1963).

Gilbert blew Mike and George off the front pages, as its record dimensions and ominous approach dominated news reports. Overnight, specialists like Bob Sheets, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, became trusted gurus, interpreting the big blow with computers. Somehow the storm seemed the violent culmination of a season in which Mother Nature has done anything but nurture, producing the hottest American summer in 50 years, a drought that parched the Midwest, forest fires that turned U.S. parks into cinders, floods that submerged large parts of Bangladesh and Sudan.

Only in its final landfall did Gilbert reveal a benign side. The hurricane hit a relatively unpopulated area of Mexico, 110 miles southwest of Brownsville, Texas, where the terrain of mountains and flat farmland helped undermine its strength. It did bring more than 6 in. of rain, causing flooding in an area the size of Colorado. At week's end it had spun off some 30 tornadoes twisting around coastal Texas. High winds and battering rain were expected as far north as Chicago. Gilbert, according to Mark Zimmer of the National Hurricane Center, will turn into a "huge rainmaking machine" that will bring water to parched areas extending to the lower Ohio River Valley.

Born as a low-pressure trough off the coast of Africa, fed by a combination of heat, moisture and atmospheric instability, Gilbert grew in size and force as it moved westward across the Atlantic. On Saturday, Sept. 10, about 225 miles southeast of the Dominican Republic, it was officially designated a hurricane when its winds exceeded the required 74 m.p.h. It sideswiped Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti on Sunday before reaching a raging fury over Jamaica on Monday. In Kingston the sky darkened and turned slate blue, as winds tore into the unprotected tropical island. Streets became rivers; trees were abruptly upended; and four out of five rooftops were ripped off. Said a U.S. airman trapped on the island: "There was no power, no water, no phones, no radio, nothing. The place was wrecked."

Afterward Gilbert nearly doubled in force, making it, like Camille in 1969, a rare Category 5 hurricane, as it smashed into the Yucatan at dawn on Wednesday. In the flashy resort city of Cancun, authorities evacuated several thousand people, mostly vacationers. But the poor had no place to go. Winds leveled their often flimsy dwellings, and flood tides washed them away. Some 30,000 were left homeless in Yucatan state and about 10,000 more in Campeche on the peninsula's west coast.

One of Gilbert's freakiest turns came when its winds caught up a 300-ft.- long Cuban freighter five miles out in the Gulf. Mountainous waves heaved the ship all the way onto the shore at Cancun beach, where it smashed into a structure and came to rest on the sand.

Late in the week some parts of the Yucatan peninsula remained under 10 ft. of water, and seafront hotels were reporting extensive damage by high waves that rolled over seawalls and bashed through first-floor areas. Damage in Cancun was so extensive that one hotelier predicted it would require at least a month to clean up before reopening for business.

In its main strike at Mexico, Gilbert lumbered ashore in Tamaulipas state. Ocean tides spilled across two miles of flatlands into the town of La Pesca. Thousands of inhabitants were evacuated in areas of northeastern Mexico, and in mountainous terrain farther inland, Gilbert caused added disruptions through flooding. On a low-lying road in the city of Monterrey, four buses were trapped and overturned by the rising Santa Catarina River. Only 13 of the estimated 200 passengers escaped; six policemen were drowned in the rescue effort.

Elsewhere in the Gulf, the storm shut down hundreds of offshore oil platforms, forced 5,000 workers to evacuate and halted the daily flow of 1.7 million barrels of oil. Partly as a result, the price of oil jumped 75 cents a bbl. on world markets before declining 33 cents at week's end.

The entire Gulf Coast of Texas had been put on alert as Gilbert headed toward landfall. From Brownsville to Biloxi, Miss., people sought shelter from the storm, in many places clogging highways and emptying supermarket shelves. Houston, 50 miles inland, shuddered at the prospect of its glimmering skyscrapers swaying in the gale-force winds. About a quarter of the 60,000 residents of Galveston Island headed for higher ground, leaving boarded-up windows and fortified houses. In Brownsville, a dirt-poor border town of 110,000, those who could afford to fled inland. But since half the residents are below the poverty line, many had no place to go and no money to get there. Dozens of emergency shelters in the Rio Grande Valley were filled with locals and the many Mexicans who crossed the border seeking refuge.

The dramatic warnings proved unnecessary. Gilbert hit the coast with heavy rains, high waves and winds, but not with a vengeance. Galveston experienced high tides, yet hardly a window was broken. In Brownsville, cars were overturned and mobile homes upended, but there was no loss of life. Those Brownsville residents who refused to leave acted as though they had called Gilbert's bluff. A Coast Guard helicopter rescued the crews of three fishing boats foundering in the Gulf of Mexico. "We're just full of happy endings today," said Petty Officer Bob Morehead, "which is great with a storm like this."

Gilbert, in the jargon of meteorologists, was "well behaved" -- it stuck to a relatively predictable course and steady speed. Advances in computer models, satellite pictures and aerial measurements made Gilbert as closely monitored as a shuttle launch. But in a century marked by man's destructive capacity and technological hubris, Gilbert was a humbling reminder that man remains very much at the mercy of the elements. A giant hurricane was long overdue in the Gulf and the Caribbean. Others are destined to occur, and concern is growing that unrestricted development and population growth on fragile barrier islands and coastlands could lead to catastrophe. The U.S. got a pass from Gilbert, but poorer, less fortunate neighbors took a hit they could scarcely afford. Next time the scariest weather story of a scary season could strike closer to home.

With reporting by Lianne Hart/Brownsville, Bruce Henderson/Miami and Richard Woodbury/Houston