THE steel shutters came down on Belfast at about 4 p.m. yesterday, as if on a city under curfew.
People quickened their pace and hurried to car parks and bus stops.
The semblance of commercial and social normality which held out during the day evaporated as the middle and professional classes fled to the leafy suburbs. By 6.30 p.m. the city centre was as bare as if it had been found in the Bermuda Triangle.
There was a hiatus, broken only by fire engines and occasionally ambulances racing through the empty streets. Then the reports began to come through of vehicles hijacked and burning in north Belfast.
The sound of drums heralded the first of several Orange marches heading out from Sandy Row. It was relatively small, numbering only about 500 Orangemen and supporters, and it moved towards the loyalist Donegall Pass area.
All day Belfast had been occupied clearing up the debris and damage of the previous night's disturbances. The British army a used huge mechanical diggers to crush and carry away the scores of wrecked and burnt out vehicles, particularly in east Belfast.
The Belfast Chamber of Trade reported that retail business in the city centre was down by 25 per cent since the previous day. It announced, reluctantly, that the customary Thursday late night shopping in the city centre was being cancelled tonight.
One by one, the routes into and out of the city were sealed off by barricades and Orange cordons as the evening wore on. Medical authorities expressed concern that doctors and nurses were now being turned back at the roadblocks. Belfast was under siege for the third day.
Ironically, the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, in a joint statement with the Co Armagh Grand Lodge and Portadown District Orange Lodge, "totally condemned the wanton destruction, violence and intimidation of last night". The television pictures repeatedly showed images of men in Orange sashes tearing at the barricades at Drumcree.
The continual drone of the surveillance helicopters over the city was loud in the absence of traffic noise By 9 p.m. the beating of the drums took over again as the parade reappeared from Sandy Row, heading again in the direction of the Ormeau Road.
Reporters described a gathering stand off at the Ormeau Bridge flash point, where bands had massed and loyalists had clambered on to the barrier of, police vehicles.
In east Belfast another Orange parade headed towards the nationalist Short Strand but was turned away by police and troops.
Up on Springfield Road, groups of, nationalist youths armed with sticks waited, determined to repel any storming of the peace line at Lanark Way by loyalists, as had happened on Tuesday night.
In north Belfast, Catholic, homes on Clifton Park Avenue had makeshift shutters of wooden planks hammered into place over their windows.
Belfast was expectant waiting for anything. But the news from Drumcree was growing mores ominous by the hour and, as the Orange parades continued to, march here and there, to and fro, around and about, the impression gradually developed that the main, purpose was to confuse and divert" - to stretch police resources to the limit and prepare the ground for a final, massive confrontation at Drumcree.