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Hurricane Katrina gains power after Florida havoc

Posted on: Friday, 26 August 2005, 11:06 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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