Wilma pounds storm-scarred Florida, kills four

By Michael Christie

MIAMI (Reuters) – Hurricane Wilma swamped and pounded
southern Florida on Monday, killing four as it shattered
high-rise windows, uprooted trees, destroyed mobile homes and
cut power to almost 7 million people.

Risk assessment companies said the storm caused up to $10
billion in insured damages after smashing into southwest
Florida as a surprisingly strong Category 3 hurricane, having
fed on the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico after killing 17
people in a rampage through the Caribbean.

At one point the fiercest hurricane ever recorded in the
Atlantic, it flooded the low-lying Florida Keys, then hit the
mainland south of the fast-growing retirement city of Naples
and sped across the Everglades to the populous Miami-Fort
Lauderdale area on the Atlantic Coast.

“It sounded like a freight train driven by the devil,
that’s what it sounded like,” said Rob Lerner, 35, who stayed
on his houseboat in North Bay Village in Miami before the
howling of the wind and the crashing of splintering boats drove
him onto land.

Four deaths were confirmed in Florida, including a man
crushed by a falling tree in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of
Coral Springs. Two people died in Collier County in southwest
Florida and one in St. Johns County in northeast Florida.

Florida Power & Light, the state’s main electricity
provider, said 3.2 million customers, or nearly 7 million
people, were without power, and could spend days if not weeks
without refrigerators, air conditioning and running water.

STRANDED ON ROOFTOPS

The surging sea rose over the Overseas Highway linking the
110-mile (175-km) Florida Keys island chain to the mainland,
and officials in Marathon said residents were stranded on
rooftops while leaking propane tanks and gas lines caused small
explosions.

Monica Rivadeneira, 34, retreated to a closet when Wilma’s
winds whipped concrete blocks against her Miami Beach apartment
building. “I took a book and a light and my cell phone and I
called everybody I knew from the closet,” she said.

“It was wild. The wind was howling.”

Miami International Airport suffered damage that will
likely keep it closed for several days, said Miami-Dade County
Mayor Carlos Alvarez. Miami-Dade officials said only 18 of the
county’s 5,600 traffic signals were working.

Fears of an outburst of looting like the lawlessness that
occurred after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans at the end
of August prompted authorities in several Florida counties to
declare curfews. A handful of people were arrested for looting.

Several hospitals were damaged or lost power. At least
three evacuated patients after the storm passed, including 36
newborns from West Boca Hospital in Palm Beach County.

Wilma, a sprawling hurricane that covered much of Florida,
was the eighth hurricane to strike the state in 15 months, an
unprecedented display of nature’s fury that climatologists say
is the result of the Atlantic having swung back into a period
of heightened storm activity that could last 20 years.

“This ain’t our first rodeo,” Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings told
reporters in Tallahassee. “We have a lot of experience … But
the rest of the story will not be as quick as the storm.”

More than 3,100 National Guard troops were deployed and
3,500 more were on alert.

Wilma had weakened after three days hammering Cancun and
Cozumel in Mexico, where it battered the tourism industry, but
revved up to reach Florida with 125 mph (200 kph) winds.

The winds slowed to 105 mph (165 kph) during Wilma’s
furious four-hour trek across Florida, but the hurricane
strengthened again as it raced northeast across the Atlantic
with 120 mph (195 kph) winds.

STARTLED RESIDENTS

Wilma’s power startled thousands who ignored orders to
evacuate the Florida Keys. The eye moved north of Key West, but
a storm surge left much of the tourist town made famous by
writer Ernest Hemingway under thigh-high water.

Wilma lashed Cuba with howling 86 mph (138 kph) winds on
its way east and roaring seas crashed over Havana’s famed
Malecon seawall to flood the city of 2 million.

Rescuers used row boats, military vehicles and makeshift
rafts — including inner tubes — to ferry hundreds of stranded
residents and tourists to higher ground.

Forecasters said Wilma was the strongest storm to hit the
Miami area since August 1992, when Hurricane Andrew caused more
than $25 billion in damage.

President George W. Bush signed a major disaster
declaration for Florida.

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 storm,
Alpha.

The season spawned three of the most intense Atlantic
storms on record: Katrina devastated New Orleans in August and
killed 1,200, Rita hit the Texas-Louisiana border a few weeks
later, and Wilma at one point boasted the lowest barometric
pressure reading ever observed in the Atlantic basin.

(Additional reporting by Anthony Boadle in Havana, Michael
Peltier in Tallahassee, Laura Myers in Key West, Jane Sutton
and Jim Loney in Miami)