Hurricane Katrina rearms after Florida havoc
By Michael Christie and Jane Sutton
MIAMI (Reuters) – Hurricane Katrina recharged on Friday for
a second and potentially more powerful assault on the U.S.
coast after killing up to seven people on a rampage across
densely populated southeast Florida.
Katrina was briefly downgraded to a tropical storm as it
churned across the swampy Everglades after dousing Miami and
Fort Lauderdale, but turned back into a hurricane with 100-mph
(160-kph) winds as it moved over warm Gulf waters.
It was projected to become a dangerously powerful hurricane
with winds of at least 131 mph (210 kph) by late Sunday or
early Monday, threatening U.S. oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of
Mexico and already storm-scarred Gulf Coast communities from
the Florida Panhandle to low-lying New Orleans.
“We have ample resources to meet whatever comes,” said
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
“I worry more about the strains on family life in our
state. I worry more about communities being hard hit already,
preparing for yet another storm. Such is the physical loss of
property and psychological aspect of this, it wears you down.”
The Panhandle area was hit in July by Hurricane Dennis and
last September by Ivan. Many buildings there remain unrepaired
or covered in vulnerable tarpaulin.
Katrina dumped up to 12 inches of rain after coming ashore
south of Fort Lauderdale on Thursday with 80 mph (130 kph)
winds. It then made a slow and punishing trek southwest across
Miami, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Insured losses from Katrina’s first strike could reach $1
billion to $2 billion, said Risk Management Solutions, a
Newark, California-based forecaster. Risk estimator AIR
Worldwide forecast $600 million in insured losses.
SHEETS OF RAIN
Sheets of rain flooded communities and fierce gusts
stripped tiles off roofs, tore away mosquito screens and
shattered trees.
Floodwaters 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.”
Seven people were killed by the storm — three of them by
falling trees, officials said. One elderly man died when his
car struck a tree. Police recovered two bodies from a capsized
houseboat and a storm-battered yacht anchored offshore near
Miami’s City Hall, and police in Florida City south of Miami
said a man there also appeared to have drowned.
A couple and their three children aboard a 24-foot (7-
meter) boat off Cape Coral on Florida’s southern Gulf coast
were rescued by a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter.
An overpass under construction collapsed west of Miami,
blocking the city’s main east-west highway.
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.
Emergency officials reported more than 2.4 million people
without power in Florida — a state punished by four powerful
hurricanes in a six-week period last year.
Six oil companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico said they
evacuated workers from offshore platforms as a precaution, but
only one, Total of France, said production had been cut.
Oil prices slid more than a $1 a barrel after dealers bet
Katrina would not go further west than Florida’s Panhandle and
would miss the heart of oil and gas production in the Gulf.
But forecasters warned on Friday that computer models
predicting the storm’s track had shifted ominously westward.
By 5 p.m. (2100 GMT), Katrina was about 70 miles
west-northwest of Key West and moving west-southwest at 8 mph
(13 kph). It was expected to take a more westward track on
Saturday and eventually loop northward.