DOMINICAN REP.: Hurricane Jacks

Hot and sullen, the sun rose through oppressive yellow haze over Santo Domingo. Houses remained shuttered, shops did not open, little knots of serious, worried people met on street corners, in the tin roofed ramshackle market. Two flags hung limply on the signal mast of Fort Ozama’s 16th century “Homage Tower.” There was not enough breeze to spread them from the mast but every Dominican knew what they were: one above the other, two little red flags with square black centres, the most dreadful signal of the tropics, hurricane jacks.

Two days before, a hurricane from the South Caribbean struck and nearly demolished the tiny island of Dominica in the British Leeward Islands. It was moving northwest, very slowly. Next day its centre was reported 100 mi. southwest of Porto Rico. On the second day it was right under Santo Domingo and almost stationary. Would it blow itself out at sea? Would it turn south toward Panama? Would it strike?

At noon it struck. A howling grey wall of wind and water smashed full against the city. Trees bent over, slowly, grotesquely, then snapped from their roots, were flung aside like chaff. Above the roar of the wind came the rumble of falling masonry, and screams.

At the Pan-American Airways Inc. airport operations manager R. I. Dunton saw his barometer fall to 28. When he looked again the instrument had blown away.

The roof was ripped off the U. S. legation. The French legation collapsed as did the British, Cuban, Mexican, Spanish. From the flattened insane asylum, lunatics ran howling through the streets.

Four hours later the sun shone peaceful and bright on a ruined city. The hurricane, tearing inland across the island broke its force against the rugged mountains separating Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic from French-speaking Haiti. In Santo Domingo city 1,500 were killed, 5,000 were injured, 30,000 homeless and destitute. Dapper General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo who has only been president of the Dominican Republic 19 days found the presidential palace crashing about his ears. Almost before the wind stopped whistling he was in the streets directing army and police relief operations. To Washington he sent a pathetic message:

“Situation appalling. Cyclone destroyed 90% of this city with estimated loss of at least $30,000,000. . . . We are therefore in need of everything.”

The U. S. was quick to help. President Hoover was publicly and officially shocked and grieved, the American Red Cross sent $50,000. The Haitian government voted $20,000 more. From the Marine Corps base at Port au Prince, Haiti, an officer flew over on reconnaissance trip. He reported :

“There is no water fit to drink. The water works are demolished, the river is a sea of mud and the dead are still uncounted. Floods have washed out the newly buried dead in the cemeteries and coffins float around like corks. . . . Concrete cisterns are being used as funeral pyres, cremating as many as fifty bodies at a time. Even at a distance of ten miles . . . it was apparent that bodies were being burned. When we landed we could see wagons pass by loaded with dead. The drivers would stop and curse and cry: ‘More dead, more dead!’ “

Governor Theodore Roosevelt of Porto Rico hastened to despatch the U. S. S. Grebe with a medical unit. For disease spread fast. One surgeon performed 50 amputations in a few hours. The U. S. Navy loaned the Red Cross three tri-motor Ford planes each to carry 1,500 pounds of medical supplies. Food and water was rushed from every direction, especially from inland valleys of the island which had escaped the storm. A sunken dredge and rushing torrents blocked Santo Domingo harbor; supplies were ferried ashore in ships’ boats.

Hispaniola. Three hundred years ago only a madman would have suggested that the little Dutch trading post at the mouth of the Hudson would ever be more important than the city of Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo in 1630 was still the capital and nerve centre of the declining Spanish Empire in the New World. Dominicans are prouder than Mexicans of their Spanish blood. Actually over half the population is Mulatto. They pay no taxes. The government struggles along on a 60% tariff on all imports collected for it by a U. S. customs agent, William E. Pullman. Sugar cane, coffee, tobacco, cocoa are their only important crops. World overproduction has ruined all four. A $30,000,000 loss is not a disaster to such a country, it is Calamity. Dominicans wandering in the stench of burning corpses last week took some comfort in the fact that cathedral, palace, fortress, nearly all their oldest stone buildings, withstood the hurricane.