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Hurricane Katrina rearms after Florida havoc

Posted on: Friday, 26 August 2005, 17:36 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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