Hurricane Wilma cut furiously across Florida late on Monday, killing five people and leaving more than three million homes without power, after churning huge waves that flooded Cuba’s capital, Havana.
A man was killed by a falling tree in Coral Springs, one of the towns hardest hit by what is the most damaging of the eight main hurricanes to have hit the state in the past 14 months.
Two men died in Collier county, one when his roof collapsed and another from a heart attack. In Palm Beach county, a man who went to move his van was killed when debris smashed him into the windscreen. And a woman (83) from St Johns county died in a car crash while leaving the area at the weekend.
The storm killed at least 10 people in its violent passage through Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula over the weekend, where tens of thousands of American and European tourists were forced to flee resorts or hide in shelters.
In Cuba, four people, including three foreign tourists, died in a bus accident as they evacuated on Friday before the storm slammed the island.
Wilma slashed across Florida as a category-two storm in the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale before regaining strength just off the Atlantic coast, where it grew into a category-three hurricane, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Centre (NHC).
”Wilma strengthens slightly as the hurricane races north-eastward away from Florida and the Bahamas,” the NHC said at 11.59 GMT. Wilma was expected to strengthen on Tuesday.
Wilma was about 560km south of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and hurricane warnings for the Bahamas were discontinued, the NHC said.
As the storm sped ahead, at 61kph, it dumped less rain on Florida.
The storm left about 3,2-million homes without power in south-east Florida, affecting about six million people, according to Florida Power and Light. It will take weeks to restore power to all customers, the company said.
Governor Jeb Bush had urged residents who missed the chance to flee to stay indoors.
”Just stay in your homes until the storm has passed,” he said.
The acting chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, David Paulison, urged those who evacuated to wait until authorities give them the green light to go home.
”Please, please don’t go back until the local emergency managers tell you it’s safe to go back,” Paulison said in a news conference.
But many had ignored the evacuation calls in the south-west city of Naples and in the Florida Keys island chain south of Florida.
Jeb Bush’s brother, President George Bush, declared a major disaster in Florida, releasing federal funds to supplement state and local recovery efforts, and said emergency aid was ready to be deployed.
”We have prepositioned food, medicine, communications equipment, urban search and rescue teams,” Bush said.
The president was keen to show the government was well prepared for the disaster after his administration was heavily criticised for its slow response to Hurricane Katrina, which claimed more than 1 200 lives after striking the southern US coast on August 29.
The Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, where the space shuttle is launched, shut down and told employees to stay home on Monday.
Wilma could add as much as $10-billion to US insurance companies’ already hefty hurricane bill, insurance estimators said.
South of the Florida Keys in Cuba, some Havana residents said it was the worst storm they had seen.
”I’m terrified, this was apocalyptic and the worst is yet to come,” said Olga Salinas (58), trapped on the second floor of her house in the flooded Miramar district of Havana.
By one measure, the waves battering Havana’s sea wall, the Malecon, were fierce — ”beyond those previously reported”, according to Cuba’s Meteorological Institute.
Homes and businesses near the sea wall were flooded, and cars sank in the sea water.
In Mexico, the death toll rose to 10 after Wilma slammed the touristic Yucatan peninsula.
About 250 police and troops patrolled the streets of Cancun to deter looters. Authorities fired warning shots and tear gas to disperse looters overnight, a municipal official said. A curfew was in place on Monday.
Mexico said it would begin on Tuesday an airlift of some of the 35 000 tourists stranded in Cancun. — AFP, Guardian Unlimited Â