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Hurricane Katrina punishes south Florida

Posted on: Thursday, 25 August 2005, 23:55 CDT

By Michael Christie

MIAMI (Reuters) - Hurricane Katrina hammered Florida's crowded southeast coast with hours of buffeting winds and whipping rains, pitching 2 million people into darkness as power lines came down and killing two.

The storm, which was supposed to be a minimal hurricane but nevertheless delivered a fierce punch, weakened slightly over the swampy Everglades on Friday, but in its wake it left flooded neighborhoods and streets carpeted with tree limbs and leaves.

Katrina dumped up to 12 inches of rain after coming ashore just south of Fort Lauderdale and then began a slow and punishing trek southwest across southern Florida, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Two men were killed in Fort Lauderdale and the city of Plantation to the west by falling trees, said Broward County public information officer Dennis Myers. WFOR television said the first man died when the tree brought a power line down onto his car.

"This is going to be a long night for Miami-Dade and Broward counties," hurricane center director Max Mayfield told

CNN.

While Katrina was expected to weaken over land, Mayfield warned it would restrengthen again once it emerged over warm Gulf of Mexico waters and could loop north to slam into the hurricane-scarred Florida Panhandle as a much more powerful hurricane. The area was hit in July by Hurricane Dennis and last September by Hurricane Ivan.

Florida Power and Light Co., the main electricity company in the area, said more than 1 million customers, representing more than 2 million people, were without power and that number was bound to rise.

Katrina made landfall at about 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) on Thursday between Hallandale Beach and North Miami Beach with sustained winds of 80 mph (130 kph), the hurricane center said. By early on Friday, as it moved west of Miami, the winds had eased to 75 mph, the center said.

ALREADY PUNISHED

That still made it a minimal Category 1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. Such hurricanes can damage flimsy trailer homes but rarely cause structural damage to buildings. Emergency managers had urged people to leave vulnerable islands and mobile home parks, but did not order mandatory evacuations.

Punished last season by four powerful hurricanes in six weeks, Florida residents had snapped up drinking water and spare batteries from stores. Some filled sandbags to try to protect their homes from flooding, but few bothered to put up hurricane shutters.

Drivers lined up to fill their cars with gasoline before the storm hit and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush urged South Floridians to conserve fuel.

Schools and businesses in southeast Florida closed and cruise lines rerouted their ships as the seaports shut down.

Party planners on Miami Beach canceled poolside bashes that had been organized for celebrities and fans in town for the MTV Video Music Awards. Forecasters expected the skies to clear in time for the awards show on Sunday.

Forecasters have predicted an unusually high number of storms this year because the Atlantic has swung into a period of more intense storm activity.

The June-through-November Atlantic hurricane season has seen 11 named storms, a record so early in the year.

Source: REUTERS

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