Hurricane bears down on Florida

Strong winds and whipping rains began to lash eastern Florida, yesterday as Hurricane Frances, an enormous storm, crept across the northern Bahamas toward the United States.

Although weaker than it had been, Frances promised to bring torrential rain to Florida's Atlantic coast, where 2.5 million people had been told to evacuate their homes, after delivering a long pounding to the Bahamas.

Storm conditions were forecast to last between 12 to 15 hours. Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown said that people should not let their guard down because Frances had weakened, as it could still cause huge damage.

In the Bahamas, the hurricane killed one person, blew off roofs, downed trees and power lines and caused widespread flooding in the 700-island archipelago which is home to 300,000 people.

By 8 a.m. (noon GMT), the slow-moving storm was about 180 km east of West Palm Beach, Florida, and hanging over Freeport on Grand Bahama island, the US National Hurricane Center said.

It was moving west-northwest at 9 km/h on a path that could mean its core would sweep ashore near Vero Beach, just south of Cape Canaveral where NASA's space shuttles are launched, late yesterday or early today.

The storm's top sustained winds were 170 km/h, well down from the devastating 235-km/h winds it carried a couple of days ago, but still strong enough to uproot trees, down power lines and wipe out mobile homes.

Hurricane-force winds were expected to spread out 170 km from the centre, but seemed likely to spare some of the most populated areas of Florida's east coast, such as Miami and Fort Lauderdale, from the full brunt of their fury.

Charley, a more powerful but much smaller hurricane, caused $7.4 billion in insured losses and killed more than 20 people last month.

Thousands of people were likely to lose power after Frances nears the US coast and dumps up to 30 cm of rain on the Florida peninsula, emergency officials said.

As the storm bore down during the week, hundreds of thousands of Floridians left their homes to stay in hotels, with relatives and friends or in public storm shelters, shuttering their homes and businesses.

By early yesterday, state emergency management officials reported that 55,000 people were in public shelters, a figure that included some of those left homeless when Hurricane Charley slammed into Florida's southwest coast just three weeks ago.

Strong winds from advance rain squalls downed trees and knocked out power on Friday to 170,000 people in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, which along with Palm Beach are the state's most populous areas, with more than 5 million people. Work crews restored electricity to 90,000 but would not venture out again until the storm passes, a Florida Power and Light spokeswoman said.

Municipalities in evacuation zones imposed curfews to keep people off the roads at night and to prevent looting.