Hurricane Wilma hits Florida’s southwest coast

By Laura Myers

KEY WEST, Florida (Reuters) – Hurricane Wilma crashed
ashore in southern Florida on Monday and roared across the
Everglades toward the densely populated Miami area after
slamming Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and killing 17 people
across the Caribbean.

Once the most intense hurricane on record in the Atlantic,
Wilma weakened after hammering Cancun and Cozumel for three
days with punishing winds and rains, destroying homes and
ruining luxury hotels but revved up as it raced toward Florida,
its top sustained winds strengthening to 125 mph (200 kph).

Wilma’s powerful core struck the Florida mainland around
Cape Romano, near the city of Naples. The sprawling storm,
about 400 miles across, covered much of the peninsula and hit
as a Category 3 on the five-stage scale of hurricane intensity,
capable of causing significant damage.

Some of its strongest winds were felt in Miami, Fort
Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, the state’s most populous area
with about 5 million people. Forecasters said it could prove to
be the strongest storm felt in Miami since Hurricane Andrew in
1992.

Hurricane-force gusts of at least 74 mph (118 kph) and
flooding rains hit the Florida Keys where storm-weary residents
largely ignored evacuation orders.

The streets of the Keys, a 110-mile (175-km) island chain
no more than 16 feet above sea level at its highest point and
connected to the Florida mainland by a single road, were dark
and deserted as the winds and rains picked up overnight and
power went out block by block.

Seawater sloshed into downtown streets in Key West and
local media reported parts of the Overseas Highway were swamped
in the Upper Keys.

Fatigued after having been forced to evacuate for three
earlier hurricanes this season, no more than 7 percent of the
Keys’ 80,000 residents fled ahead of Wilma, officials said,
despite fears Wilma’s storm surge could wash out the highway
and strand residents without power, water or telephone lines.

“The storm had meandered around so long that it lured me
into a false sense of security,” said Key West resident Warren
Benjamin.

In southwest Florida, residents crowded restaurants and
bars on Sunday evening in Naples and seemed to pay little heed
to warnings the hurricane could bring a tidal surge of up to 17
feet to the area.

Before 7 a.m. (1100 GMT), Wilma’s eye wall crossed the
coast near Naples and the core was moving northeast at a brisk
20 mph (32 kph). Hurricane-force winds extended up to 90 miles
, while tropical storm-force winds stretched out 230 miles from
the center.

Wilma was expected to accelerate and shoot across the
Florida Peninsula. The storm will plow through the heart of the
Everglades — Florida’s famed “River of Grass” and home to
endangered species like the Florida panther and tens of
thousands of alligators — and over to the state’s east coast
around Palm Beach County.

UNPRECEDENTED STORM SEASON

Wilma was the eighth hurricane to strike Florida in a
little over 14 months, an unprecedented display of nature’s
fury.

The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, which ends on November
30, became the busiest since records began 150 years ago with
the formation on Saturday of the 22nd named tropical cyclone,
Alpha.

It also boasts three of the most intense Atlantic storms on
record, with Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in August
and killed 1,200, Rita, which hit the Texas-Louisiana border a
few weeks later, and now Wilma, the storm with the lowest
barometric pressure reading ever observed in the Atlantic.

In Mexico, Wilma caused severe damage in Cancun and on the
island of Cozumel off the Yucatan.

Many of the 20,000 or more tourists stranded on the “Maya
Riviera” were short of food and water and becoming increasingly
frustrated on Sunday as they faced a fourth night in cramped
shelters with no electricity or running water.

The storm killed seven people in Mexico, fewer than many
had feared. It killed 10 people in Haiti last week after
spawning mudslides in the impoverished Caribbean country.

“There is huge devastation. This hurricane has provoked a
tremendous impact. But Mexico has experience and it was
demonstrated right from the beginning, saving lives,” Mexican
President Vicente Fox told Reuters in Cancun.

In Cuba, 86-mph (138-kph) wind gusts howled through the
deserted streets of Havana, knocking down lampposts and
smashing windows in some tall buildings. The city’s 2 million
inhabitants hunkered down in the dark, listening to
battery-powered radios after authorities cut power to prevent
electrical accidents.

Rough seas stirred up by Wilma crashed over Havana’s famed
Malecon sea wall after midnight, turning streets into rivers of
knee-deep floodwater. About 15 blocks were under water.

Firefighters rescued residents from flooded homes near the
seafront, carrying some elderly people to safety.

“We haven’t seen it this bad in years,” said resident
Alfredo Saurez.

(Additional reporting by Anthony Boadle in Havana)