Weakened Frances Leaves Much of Florida in Chaos
Date: 07-Sep-04
Country: USA
Author: Michael Christie
Storm-weary Floridians emerged from hurricane shelters as Tropical Storm Frances moved off the state's west coast after whipping off roofs, washing sailboats ashore and cutting power to nearly 6 million people.
Frances virtually shut down the fourth-largest U.S. state, home to 16 million people, for two days and promised damage not just to buildings but to the state's $53 billion tourism industry on the usually busy Labor Day holiday weekend.
Miami, the state's largest population center and business hub, escaped the worst of the storm and Disney World near Orlando, the main tourist playground, said it had sustained little damage and would reopen some parks on Monday.
The $9.1 billion citrus industry, hard hit by Hurricane Charley last month, was likely to take another blow as the storm moved across the state's best growing regions as a hurricane.
Frances could cause between $2 billion and $10 billion in insured losses, industry group Risk Management Solutions said.
The human toll, in lost housing and livelihoods, will also be great. "We think it's going to be an enormous bill," American Red Cross President Marsha Evans told CNN on Sunday. "We think that it's going to involve many more families perhaps than Hurricane Andrew did because it is so widespread."
Forecasters downgraded the storm, from which 2.5 million people had been urged to flee, from a hurricane to a tropical storm on Sunday as it enveloped Tampa on Florida's west coast.
Police and fire crews moved out into streets where Frances peeled away aluminum siding, tore boats from moorings, felled trees and shattered traffic signals.
In Fort Pierce, sailboats washed into parking lots. "There's damage but not total destruction," said county emergency management spokeswoman Linette Trabulsy. "It could have been a lot worse."
TEST OF ENDURANCE
In Cocoa Beach, Frances shattered high-rise windows, stripped roofs off beachfront condos and tore apart at least two gas stations. Toppled trees covered cars and mobile homes.
Nearly 120,000 people were in public shelters, 3,400 patients were evacuated from hospitals and half a million sandbags were distributed to hold back floods, officials said.
A test of endurance for millions of Floridians, Frances weakened over land, with sustained winds of 65 mph, down from 105 mph on Saturday.
State emergency managers said there were no confirmed reports of storm-related deaths. Television reported one person in a shelter died of a heart attack.
At 2 a.m., the center of the storm was about 150 miles southeast of Apalachicola, Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. National Hurricane Center reported. It was moving west-northwest at 10 mph and was expected to turn to northwest and hit the Florida Panhandle later on Monday.
The hurricane hit hardest along a 150-mile stretch of Florida's east coast from Palm Beach to Titusville and the Space Coast, home to NASA's space shuttle fleet. Many airports and big shopping malls remained closed.
Business activity ground to a halt on one of the four long weekends retailers count on for big sales. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. closed 59 stores by Friday. Lowe's Cos., the home improvement chain, had 44 stores closed on Sunday.
But officials lifted evacuation orders for Miami-Dade and Broward counties, the state's most heavily populated, and the international airports in Miami and Fort Lauderdale reopened.
State officials said 2.9 million utility customers were without electricity. Power companies say a customer averages two people, meaning 5.8 million people had no electricity. (Additional reporting by Marc Serota in West Palm Beach, Michael Peltier in Tallahassee, Frances Kerry, Jane Sutton and Jim Loney in Miami and Jui Chakravorty in New York)