The Caribbean: The Storm with an Eye For Demagogues

The U.S. weather satellite Tiros spotted it first, and the photograph drew whistles from a forecaster at the San Juan, P.R., weather station. "There it is," he said, "and it's a beaut!"

In the tropical Atlantic off the northeast coast of South America lay a doughnut-shaped cloud mass of warm air, gradually rising and circling in counterclockwise motion as a drop in atmospheric pressure sucked layers of cooler air in beneath it. The weather men named the mass Flora—sixth hurricane of the 1963 season—and commenced the routine precautions that in recent years have taken some of the bite out of the fierce storms: hurricane-hunter planes to check course, speed, wind velocity, intensity of the rain; detailed advisories and instructions to everyone in the storm's path. But in one of those violent quirks of nature, incredibly compounded by man, all the warnings proved futile. By the time Flora finished her ten-day rampage through the Caribbean, she went down in history as one of the most devastating storms ever to strike the Western Hemisphere—a killer comparable to the great Galveston storm and tidal wave that swept the Texas coast in September 1900, claiming more than 6,000 lives.

Foretaste on Tobago. Swiftly, the wind rose to 75-m.p.h. hurricane force, then, to 90, 100 and 110. At noon on Sept. 30, Flora swept down on the island of Tobago, the legendary land of Robinson Crusoe off the Venezuelan coast. Entire plantations of coconut palms were flattened as by a scythe. It took only four hours for Flora to come and go. In her path she left 18 dead, hundreds injured, some 17,000 homeless, and property damage that helpless authorities estimated at many millions.

Tobago was only a foretaste. Boiling northwest through the Caribbean, Flora grew stronger with every hour, sucking up new moisture from the open sea and churning it into energy. As reports from the planes came in, Puerto Rico braced itself. So did the Bahamas and Florida. But like many an adventuress, Flora had an eye for demagogues, finally curved toward the western arm of Hispaniola. Broadcasting to Haiti, the poverty-stricken Negro nation ruled by Dictator Francois Duvalier, U.S. weathermen issued urgent warnings: "This is a dangerous hurricane ... all precautions should be taken."

No Danger. Incredibly, the Haitians scoffed at the warnings. The chief of the Haitian Red Cross went on the radio, angrily denying all danger. The next voice heard was the banshee howl of Flora. By now, the winds had accelerated to 140 m.p.h. Savagely, Flora cut a 75-mile gash across Haiti's Tiburon Peninsula, denuding the mountaintops, reducing scores of villages to rubble, and carving great rivers of red clay that stained offshore waters crimson three miles out. Radio monitors in Miami heard an unidentified operator report "terrible damage." Then he was blown off the air. Within Haiti all telephone and radio communication was cut off from the Port-au-Prince capital, lying on the edge of the hurricane's eye. And for 12 hours there was silence in Haiti.