Looting

The winds were still strong and the water outside, hip-deep, when the parade began. Carli and I first noticed the stream of people passing the house as we struggled to arrange bedding and rugs on the veranda to dry. Not dozens, but hundreds of people waded past northbound carrying empty sacks, baskets, boxes and then returned southward with the same containers, now bulging. Someone shouted to us that they were looting Harley’s warehouse. Harley’s was one of Belize’s two largest stores.

We watched in disgusted fascination as bolt after bolt of cloth, pails of paint, machetes, pots and pans, plastic goods, all the miscellany of a general store except the food that they might need in the days ahead, were carried past, proudly displayed by grinning people who a few hours earlier had been in terror for their lives. Children paddled through the water, frantically trying to keep up with their parents, not sure that anyone would drop contraband to help them if they stumbled and floundered over their heads.

 

After we turned back from the Cathedral on our afternoon walk, we continued northward along the Foreshore past our house and saw the looting at close range. Most of the side of Harley’s warehouse had been torn off by wind and water. Men swarmed into the yard, up the side of the building, and over the shelves inside like a procession of driver ants. It was unbelievable.

Looters at the top threw things to the ones on the ground. A clanking series of chamber pots, losing enamel on the way, thudded down as we watched. The looters robbed each other as enthusiastically as they stripped the warehouse. Packs of four to six pounced on successful looters, whom they left floundering in the mud while they made off with their twice-stolen treasures.

Friends who lived within view of the scene told of one monstrously fat woman who waddled away from Harley’s with dozens of pots and pans clanking down her back, sides, and waist from untidy loops of rope. As she passed, other looters grabbed at her pots, pushing her down. She pulled herself out of the mud, but as she stumbled up, others grabbed more pans. Finally she was left with a few wisps of rope, shredded clothes, and a mud-coated hide.

Alex walked over to a policeman who was standing quietly to one side, watching the looting. “Why don’t you do something about this stealing?” he asked. The policeman turned to our twelve-year-old son and explained, sternly, “They aren’t stealing. They’re taking.”

 

After the mob emptied Harley’s warehouse, they moved down the street to Bowen & Bowen’s. Emilie told us that all their own goods—the flour, bicycles, linoleum, and cloth for which they were commission agents—had floated up the street with the tide, but that their empty warehouse was refilled by goods washed into it from the broached Queen’s Bonded Warehouse across the harbor. Headstrong Hattie re-crammed the Bowen warehouse with battered, but luxurious, things.

Eric tried to get help from the police, “But,” he explained wryly, “they were too busy looking for transistor radios among the debris to be bothered.”

Eric finally got his revolver and tried to stand off the mob. He was having a poor time of it and admitted that he felt sure they would stomp him to death any minute when someone upstairs in the Bowen’s house, not realizing that the plumbing drain had broken off at high-water level, flushed a toilet. There was an incredible stench, a shower that fairly well covered the crowd, and, as Eric later described it, “There I was stoutly defending myself against an empty street.”

 

On our walk home, we passed the hulk of the Bellevue Hotel. The ground floor was a shell filled with muddy rubble. Back and forth across the opening, daring looters to approach, strode the glaring owner, Bernard Dinger, hand resting on the revolver strapped to his belt.

 

The following morning I realized that people must be looting Brodie’s, our other major store, when from my veranda I noticed a man go by with a board across his shoulders like a yoke, supporting four gallons of Brodie’s brand of paint. Behind him came a second man carrying not one, but two three-burner kerosene stoves—with legs.

We learned what happened at Brodie’s from one of its directors, our entertaining friend Nobby Lewis. Nobby said that the morning after the storm he went down early and let some of the clerks into the store. He told them—thinking of food, medicine, and essential clothing—that if there were any items their families needed, they might help themselves. He thought no more about it until he noticed one man struggling toward the door with Brodie’s largest suitcase. Nobby suggested that the employee open it. The man was understandably reluctant, but eventually gave in. It was crammed with dozens of expensive plastic-wrapped shirts, lingerie, blouses, silverware, and cameras. Nobby remarked that he hardly considered the assortment to be relief goods, and sent the man off empty-handed. From then on he insisted on seeing what the clerks took. A few clerks responded by taking out only a few acceptable things but hiding their choice items in out-of-the-way places; most of this loot was discovered later.

Meanwhile, a mob was gathering outside the store. Nobby sent for the police. They arrived and Nobby watched in disbelief as the peace officers hammered down Brodie’s door for the mob. He pleaded with the looters, but they stripped the store just as they had plundered Harley’s warehouse the afternoon before.

Nobby later described the scene as a sped-up old-fashioned movie: In through the front door, four or five abreast, empty-handed; out through the side door, four or five abreast, staggering under their loads, in an uninterrupted progression.

When the store was denuded, the looters, now armed with hammers, hatchets, and machetes, turned to storm the Brodie’s warehouse. Nobby said they seemed to climb up the sheer walls of the building trying to get in.

Inspector Brown, a very able British Honduran police officer, arrived. He was a large man with a commanding presence. Inspector Brown ordered the mob to get out of the building within one minute or, he warned, he would set off tear gas. The mob howled that they would “get him” first.

Inspector Brown put his hands on his massive hips, glared at them, and bellowed in the best approved police-training fashion, “Come on!”

They didn’t. But neither did they leave. Brown fired the tear gas, cleared the building, and got a fantastic dressing down from his superiors, both police and political. Bucher met Inspector Brown coming out of the Police Station not long after the incident, and Brown ruefully said that he probably would be a corporal after the emergency.

 

“Come on, let’s hit Bata’s,” someone in the mob yelled as they finished stripping Brodie’s.

Bata’s was our largest shoe store, owned by a Czechoslovakian chain. A friend who lived across the street from the store told me that the looters climbed up Bata’s vat and broke in through windows and the roof. The young rioters were covered with blood, great dripping gouges on arms, legs, and backs, but in their frenzy they seemed completely oblivious to their injuries.

From Bata’s they went up and down the street, breaking into every shop. A slight young shop owner tried to block the mob from entering his tiny yard-goods store. The looters threw him down, tore his clothing off, battered him, stole $500 he was carrying, and took every bolt of material from the shop.

London and Chicago newspapers ran pictures showing two policemen fighting over a camera while looters stormed around them.

 

The looting continued for about three days and then martial law was declared. People wondered why it had taken the authorities so long to react to the chaos. In retrospect, it seems that there was deep concern about further traumatizing a populace already devastated by the storm. In addition, with some police and volunteer guards enthusiastically cooperating in the looting, the authorities may have felt that the local security forces were not completely reliable. In their concern for the majority of Belize residents who were working hard to retrieve what they could of their possessions, clean their homes, and care for their families, the authorities let a loud and visible minority run amok.

British army and navy reinforcements reached the country from Jamaica. Soldiers began patrolling throughout the city. A curfew was imposed; marauders were imprisoned; and vagrants, forced into labor gangs.

 

The second-in-command of Public Works Department, Douglas Manning, an extremely able and tough British Engineer who was a friend of ours, told of noticing a parade of men carrying dripping tins and bottles as he was going to the Inflammable Liquids Depot. When he arrived, he saw with horror that looters had broken in, indiscriminately pounded open the various drums, and were filling their containers with gas or kerosene. Drums of aviation gas opened in error were dumped on the floor. The gas was pouring out into the yard, into the river, and washing through the swamp that surrounded the city.

Doug pulled his gun and ordered them out.

A spokesman whined in surprised offense, “Mon, I jus’ won mi lee bit ile.” [Man, I just want my little bit of oil (kerosene for his stove).]

Doug finally succeeded in running them all out, sent a call for the soldiers, and posted a guard.

Doug did not magnify the danger. Belize City was built of wood. The storm had destroyed or damaged fireproof roofs. Piles of lumber and debris, rapidly drying in the tropical sun, were everywhere. There was no public water supply. A single match could have made Belize simply a forgotten name on old maps in a moment.