THE BLACKOUT: Counting Losses in the Rubble

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A week after looters wrecked the R & M furniture store on East Tremont Avenue in the South Bronx, Co-Owners Irving Wiener and Richard Margolin stood in their showroom—empty except for four Day-Glo orange overstuffed chairs—and wondered if they could reopen. They had lost $100,000 worth of merchandise during the blackout and had not yet learned whether their personal disaster was covered by insurance. Explained Wiener bitterly: "Our policy covers damage by riots, but the mayor hasn't declared this a riot." Down the street, Polish-born Harry Sperber figured that he had to restock his clothing store or risk losing his whole building. Said he in heavily accented English: "If I close, the building will be empty, and it will be burned down or pulled apart."

On Manhattan's upper Broadway, Chris Stola had replenished his stock of stereo equipment, put in a solid steel door in place of the vulnerable metal gate and was back in business. He was lucky; police had chased looters away from his store, so his losses totaled only about $2,000. But he got the jitters last week when some teen-agers bobbed their heads in the door and warned: "Next time we'll get you harder."

Broken Glass. A few blocks away, Lawrence Spanier was also concerned about the future. He had replaced the broken windows in his store and obtained enough clothing from his suppliers to reopen, at least temporarily. Said he: "We haven't decided whether we'll stay, whether it's worth the investment. This could happen all over again."

Scenes like these were endlessly repeated in New York City's black and Hispanic ghettos, as shocked and angry owners of some 2,000 stores counted their blackout losses and thought hard about sticking, or fleeing the battle zone. One of the worst hit was Fedco Foods Corp., the nation's largest black-owned retailer, which had eight supermarkets looted. By last week, six were back in operation, as were several other well-capitalized, chain-owned markets and high-volume discount stores. But hundreds of tiny shops—most of them mom-and-pop operations that barely scraped by even" in the best of times—stayed gutted and shuttered. Reported TIME Correspondent Mary Cronin about the South Bronx: "Store owners gaze angrily at the rubble, the empty shelves and the twisted grilles hanging from their windows.

Broken glass glints in the streets. Garbage clogs the gutters. Burned-out buildings smell of smoke. Yet many of the merchants will open again—if they can get the money."