BRITISH WEST INDIES: Rain

Torrents of rain poured down last week over the steep green mountainsides of St. Lucia, largest of the British-owned Windward Islands in the Caribbean. Old La Soufrière, 4,000 feet high, once an active volcano, now rich in sulfur and hot springs and not to be confused with nearby St. Vincent’s La Soufrière, was shrouded in heavy mist. At a time when the island’s June-to-October rainy season was past, St. Lucia was drenched, soaked, deluged.

The shallow rivers of Britain’s twelve-by-42-mile Caribbean paradise swelled over their banks, and many of St. Lucia’s native blacks hastily abandoned their plantation huts, moved their wives & children up the sides of the valleys to what they thought was safety. No sooner had they escaped the floods than worse disaster loomed. In the hills the soaked ground gave way here & there, slipped with a roar into the valleys. Panic-stricken natives now hunted for slopes that would not slide. The alarmed British administration at Castries, the island’s seat, conscripted gangs of banana and sugar plantation laborers to keep communications open, evacuate the people to the coast. The rains fell harder. As though the soil were determined to wash back into the sea, avalanches of St. Lucia’s black clay poured off the high ground. They blotted out roads, pushed telephone poles over, disrupted all travel and communication. One night an entire acre of ground and a building housing 50 rescue workers gave way, swiftly slipped into a raging river.

Next day, as the rains continued, the worst thing of all happened. One of St. Lucia’s mountains simply cracked open, sent a high wall of rich, loose loam rushing down neighboring valleys with a terrifying roar.

Uprooting all vegetation, burying all life in its wake, the avalanche ploughed through rich plantations, removed whole hamlets from the face of the island. Few in the wall’s path had time to escape. Injured victims of previous smaller slides were caught, their legs and arms torn from their bodies by the onrush of debris. A corps of carpenters constructing wooden coffins saw a mass of mud moving down a valley, were themselves buried alive. Mothers tried to herd their young to safety as the slithering ground under their feet swept whole families to death. One seven-acre area was covered by a 20-ft. layer of clay.

As death and destruction moved with terrifying suddenness over the lovely island, temporary roadside morgues were set up. Many of St. Lucia’s 67,000 inhabitants wailed throughout the night as they waited in long lines to identify members of their families. Others insisted upon going into the deep slime, hoping to rescue imbedded relatives. With hundreds of acres of land destroyed, thousands made homeless, St. Lucia next day counted its casualties: at least 250 dead, many more missing. The British Windward Islands administration, with headquarters at St. George’s Grenada, faced its greatest relief problem.