Trial By Fire and Water

The alarm shattered a droning Labor Day in Passaic, N.J., a gritty industrial city of 58,000 that lies practically in the shadow of Manhattan's towers. When fire fighters reached the scene, they encountered what one called "a ball of fire" about 50 ft. high roaring down an alley of the factory complex alongside the city's namesake river. The blaze churned into an inferno that leapt explosively from building to building, incinerating one instantaneously and then--boom!--vaulting on to the next. In the end, some 1,000 fire fighters were powerless to stop it. Fueled by a variety of industrial-use chemicals stored in the structures, the fire consumed wooden flooring as though it were paper and blasted through brick walls, sweeping to residences in an adjacent neighborhood. By nightfall, said Police Lieut. Richard Wolak, the stricken area looked like "four blocks of flames."

At week's end the fire still smoldered upon what Passaic Mayor Joseph Lipari mournfully spoke of as "40 acres of vacant land." Gone were 23 homes, along with 17 buildings that had housed about 60 manufacturers (of plastics, handkerchiefs, chemicals, printed materials) and provided about 2,700 jobs. Damages: approximately $400 million. At least 88 families were left homeless. In one destroyed warehouse were the elaborate costumes for 75 productions of the New York City Opera. Lost also was some of the momentum that Passaic had made in a heroic effort to come back from the bankruptcy it experienced two years ago.

While investigators were trying to determine what industrial chemicals had fed the blaze, Mayor Lipari announced that the cause of the catastrophe had been traced to two twelve-year-old neighborhood boys, who had slipped through a fence and ignited a barrel apparently filled with volatile naphthalene. Said the mayor: "They stated they were playing with matches."

For four nail-biting days, furious Elena was manic and capricious. First the storm feinted at New Orleans, then howled toward Florida's Gulf Coast, then veered off abruptly. The hurricane lunged and snarled at about 500 miles of waterfront in four states like a vicious dog on a leash. Many in its projected path began to feel like Service Station Attendant Johnny Leland in Yankeetown, Fla., who said, "I can't stand this. I just wish the s.o.b. would come in, hit us and get it over with."

On Day Five, when the storm finally skulked westward and hammered into Mississippi, it was scarcely a subject for humor. Its pounding, 125-m.p.h. winds and satellite tornadoes devastated business districts and residential neighborhoods alike in Biloxi, Gulfport and Pascagoula. Approximately 1,400 commercial structures were damaged, along with at least 3,790 dwellings, leaving hundreds of people homeless and causing insured private-property losses of more than $350 million in Mississippi alone. During its wild meanderings, Hurricane Elena left behind an additional $13.8 million of insured private-property damages in Louisiana, $100.3 million in Alabama and $46.8 million in Florida.

The huge dislocations forced by the hurricane's peculiarly changeable temperament put the storm in a class by itself. Some 2 million people had to be evacuated from vulnerable homes in states on the Gulf. Florida, though it has had to cope with many a hurricane, recorded its largest evacuation ever, with as many as 1.25 million residents being forced out of dwellings or holiday retreats. Worse still, Elena's unpredictable zigging and zagging compelled hundreds of thousands of Floridians to evacuate twice. Officials took some heart, even if the inconvenienced did not, from the fact that the mass movements of people into schools, government buildings and motels were accomplished so effectively. Early warnings by the National Hurricane Center and prompt action by civil-preparedness teams minimized the loss of life: Elena was blamed for only four deaths. Florida Governor Bob Graham must have spoken for many when he said, "I think we dodged a very dangerous bullet. I think it creased us, but it didn't hit a vital organ."