Hurricane Erika Gathers Strength, but Spares Islands

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico —  Hurricane Erika grew stronger Saturday while it churned near the northeastern Caribbean, packing 85 mph winds and torrential rain and churning 12-foot seas.

Businesses closed, shelters opened and anxious residents boarded up homes and stocked up on rations to wait out the storm. But the worst side of Erika remained in the Atlantic and most of the threatened islands got off with brief bursts of rain and strong gusts of wind.

“We have some gale-force winds, but we did not get much rain. God is smiling on us,” said a relieved McArthur Nedd, owner of Nedd’s Guest House on Barbuda, as he reopened his grocery store for business Saturday morning.

“When I went to bed last night I said, ‘Lord, even now you can turn it away from us.’ God heard and answered our prayers,” Nedd said.

The storm was expected to turn away from the islands and pass about 190 miles east-northeast of Puerto Rico around midnight EDT Saturday and run parallel to the island through this morning, according to forecaster Don Aycock of the National Weather Service in San Juan.

Hurricane watches for Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands probably would be lifted overnight, he said. Warnings were canceled Saturday afternoon for all other islands.

Still, forecasters warned the storm remained dangerous. Even a slight turn to the west could punish the northernmost Caribbean islands, the National Hurricane Center said.

At 5 p.m. EDT, Erika was centered about 245 miles east-northeast of San Juan. It was moving west-northwest near 10 mph with winds near 85 mph.

Erika generated storm tides 3 feet above normal. Seas could reach 14 feet by today, forecasters said.

Earlier, a curfew was declared Saturday in the Dutch half of St. Martin, where one of the century’s biggest storms, Hurricane Luis, killed at least five people and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage on Sept. 5, 1995.

“There is tension here. People are anxious. . . . This island is not in a state to take any more hurricane damage,” said Eddie Williams, director of GVBC Radio in Philipsburg.

Gusts from the storm’s outer edge tossed around outdoor furniture in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where plastic tarps still serve as roofs for dozens of homes damaged by hurricanes Marilyn in 1995 and Bertha in 1996.

Public works crews handed out sandbags to residents in the Virgin Islands’ capital of Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas. A team of officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency arrived Saturday to advise local authorities.

In Montserrat, officials inspected shelters already overcrowded with people displaced by the Soufriere Hills volcano. When the sun began peeping from behind the clouds Saturday, many shelter residents breathed a sigh of relief.

To the north, ocean swells six feet above normal battered the northern shore of Anguilla, a British colony. Rough seas forced cancellation of ferry services in Anguilla, Antigua, Montserrat, St. Martin and Puerto Rico.

As dark skies glowered overhead, Anguilla residents switched between televised coverage of Princess Diana’s funeral and a weather station for storm updates. Officials had warned they would turn off the power if winds reached 50 mph, but they hadn’t done so by Saturday afternoon.