Hurricane Katrina gains power after Florida havoc

By Michael Christie and Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) – Hurricane Katrina killed four people, cut
power to 2.4 million and left Florida’s densely populated
southeast coast littered on Friday with branches and fallen
trees.

After being downgraded to a tropical storm as it churned
across the swampy Everglades, Katrina strengthened rapidly back
into a hurricane as it moved over warm water in the Gulf of
Mexico. It was projected to become a dangerously powerful storm
before smacking into Florida for a second time by Monday.

The Coast Guard was searching for a couple and their three
children aboard a 24-foot (7.3 meter) boat missing off Cape
Coral on Florida’s southern Gulf coast.

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

Sheets of rain flooded neighborhoods and fierce gusts
stripped tiles off roofs, tore away mosquito screens and
shattered trees, leaving neighborhoods piled high with tree
limbs and leaves.

Three hospitals were damaged by flooding. Boats tore loose
from their moorings but buildings themselves appeared to have
suffered little structural damage from the wind.

“There’s debris, there are tree limbs all over. Traffic
lights are out,” Broward County Sheriff Ken Jenne said. “Don’t
get in your car. Don’t drive unnecessarily. We’re asking people
not to go sightseeing.”

At 11:30 a.m. on Friday, Katrina was centered about 75
miles south-southwest of the Gulf Coast city of Naples and was
moving west at 7 mph (11 kph). Its top winds strengthened to
100 mph (160 kph) and forecasters expected further
strengthening.

DEATH TOLL

Three people were killed by falling trees during the storm,
including a man who died when a tree brought down a power line
onto his car, television station WFOR said. A fourth person
died when his car struck a tree.

An overpass under construction collapsed west of Miami,
blocking the city’s main east-west highway.

Most schools, businesses and government offices in
southeast Florida were closed on Friday but aviation officials
said they expected flights to resume by midday at airports in
the region. Winds were so strong a parked Boeing 767 was blown
sideways at Miami International Airport, and several small
planes flipped over at the smaller Tamiami Airport.

The hurricane center warned Katrina could loop north in the
Gulf to slam into the hurricane-scarred Florida Panhandle as a
much more powerful storm than the one that ravaged Miami. The
Panhandle area was hit in July by Hurricane Dennis and last
September by Hurricane Ivan.

“We’re at least three days away from another landfall,
which means that people in the Panhandle area once again should
take precautions to prepare for the possibility of a storm
coming,” Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said.

State emergency officials reported 1.2 million customers
without power in south Florida, representing more than 2.4
million people.

Katrina came ashore as a minimal Category 1 hurricane on
the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale with 80 mph (130 kph) winds.
Such hurricanes can damage flimsy trailer homes but rarely
cause structural damage to buildings.

‘MINIMAL HURRICANE’

“If there is any good that comes out of Katrina, maybe we
can get rid of the phrase ‘minimal hurricane,”‘ said state
meteorologist Ben Nelson. “The residents of Broward and Miami
Dade painfully found out last night there is no such thing as a
minimal hurricane.”

Punished last season by four powerful hurricanes in six
weeks, Florida residents had snapped up drinking water and
spare batteries from stores but few bothered to put up
hurricane shutters.

Florida officials asked for a federal disaster declaration
to speed recovery aid for the two counties, which encompass the
cities of Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

South Floridians had lined up to fill their cars with
gasoline before the storm, causing some gas stations to run
dry. The governor urged residents to conserve fuel.

“There is no need to top off everything you’ve got,” Bush
said.

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.