Hurricane Hugo 1989 had winds so fast they there was no machine to record the speed. they think it went way over 200 mph!! Hugo was much more devastating than Irma, if you can imagine. Some 100,000 Americans live in US Virgin Islands.
HURRICANE HUGO
Hurricane Hugo Haunts Virgin Islands By William Branigin Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, October 31, 1989; Page A1
Combined with lack of leadership from a territorial government widely denounced here as inept, the massive destruction, likened by some St. Croix residents to a nuclear holocaust, produced a sort of “day after” effect marked by a major breakdown of law and order.
Three days of near-anarchy followed Hugo’s terrible passage during the night of Sept. 17-18 and prompted President Bush to dispatch about 1,100 Army military police and 170 federal law-enforcement officers, including 75 FBI agents and a “special operations group” of the U.S. Marshals Service.
Their deployment Sept. 21 quickly quelled what the Federal Bureau of Investigation called in court documents here “pervasive looting” on St. Croix, the worst hit of the territory’s three main islands. At the Hess oil refinery, the largest in the Western hemisphere, the wind crumpled huge storage tanks like paper cups and sucked out the oil. The crude was spewed over a wide area, contaminating beaches and water supplies. Damage to the refinery is estimated at $100 million.</>
To the American Press: PR and U.S. Virgin Islands are part of the United States. Not only Florida matters.
HURRICANE IRMA