Hurricane Katrina rearms after Florida rampage

By Michael Christie and Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) – Hurricane Katrina killed five people and
cut power to more than 2 million in densely populated southeast
Florida, then recharged on Friday over the Gulf of Mexico for a
second and more powerful assault on the state.

Katrina was briefly downgraded to a tropical storm as it
churned across the swampy Everglades, but turned rapidly into a
stronger hurricane as it moved over warm Gulf waters. It was
projected to become dangerously powerful before smacking into
the Florida Panhandle by Monday.

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.

Insured losses from Katrina’s first strike could reach $600
million, according to AIR Worldwide, which estimates risk based
on property value and the strength and movement of the storm.

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

Flood waters were thigh-high in the Cutler Ridge area south
of Miami, where at least one person jet-skied down a street.

“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.”

At 2 p.m., Katrina was centered about 60 miles

west-northwest of Key West and moving west-southwest at 8
mph (13 kph). Its top winds strengthened to 100 mph (160 kph)
and forecasters expected it to intensify into a major hurricane
on Saturday.

FALLING TREES

Three people were killed by falling trees during the storm,
television station WFOR said. Another man died when his car
struck a tree. Police recovered a body from a boat anchored
offshore near Miami’s City Hall.

Foul weather hampered a search for a couple and their three
children aboard a 24-foot (7 meter) boat missing off Cape Coral
on Florida’s southern Gulf coast.

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. Winds were so strong a
parked Boeing 767 was blown sideways at Miami International
Airport.

Oil companies evacuated some workers from platforms in the
Gulf of Mexico and fears about the storm’s impact helped keep
oil prices above $67 a barrel.

The hurricane center warned Katrina could loop north in the
Gulf to slam into the 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 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 more than 2.4 million
people without power in south Florida.

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.

“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
batteries from stores but few bothered to put up hurricane
shutters.

Officials asked for a federal disaster declaration to speed
recovery aid for the cities of Miami and Fort Lauderdale.