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Hurricane Katrina rearms after Florida rampage

Posted on: Friday, 26 August 2005, 14:10 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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