Hurricane Wilma pummels Florida

Hurricane Wilma crashed into Florida yesterday, swamping the popular tourist island Key West and hammering the densely populated Miami-Fort Lauderdale area after killing 17 people in a rampage through the Caribbean.

Wilma hit the state as a surprisingly strong Category 3 hurricane after feeding for days over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It weakened to a Category 2 as it raced across the state in about four hours, but dealt a harsh blow.

A man died when a tree fell on him in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Coral Springs, local officials said. The storm knocked out electricity to more than three million people, as it blasted beach sand across coastal roads and shredded power lines.

Wilma had weakened after hammering Cancun and Cozumel in Mexico for three days, but revved up to reach Florida with 200 kph winds. The winds slowed to 165 kph as it crossed the state toward the Atlantic.

Wilma's power startled thousands of people in the vulnerable, low-lying Florida Keys who ignored evacuation orders. Although the eye moved north of Key West, a powerful storm surge washed through the chain of islands and left much of the tourist town made famous by writer Ernest Hemingway under thigh-high water.

"There is massive flooding from tip to tip," Key West Mayor Morgan McPherson said.

By 1 p.m. (1700 GMT) yesterday, Wilma's centre had begun to move out over the Atlantic Ocean off Palm Beach County and was heading northeast at about 40 kph.

Wilma lashed Cuba on its way east, paralysing Havana and flooding coastal neighbourhoods with howling 138-kph winds. Roaring seas crashed over Havana's famed Malecon sea wall. The Cuban capital of two million people was without power.

The eighth storm to hit Florida in the last 15 months, Wilma struck the mainland before dawn on the west coast near Naples, a fast-growing retiree city, and sped across the Everglades to the populous east coast, pounding Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, an area of five million people.

The worst of the storm's ocean surge struck a largely unpopulated area south of Naples, while search-and-rescue efforts were focused on Marco Island and Everglades City, two populated areas near Wilma's centre, state officials said.

The sprawling storm, about 645 kilometres across, covered much of the Florida Peninsula. Some of its strongest winds whipped greater Miami, which alone had about 1.2 million customers, or 2.4 million people, without electricity, according to Florida Power & Light.

The company said it had 1.6 million customers without power in the state and had shut down three nuclear reactors.

Wilma blasted windows out of high-rise buildings, demolished mobile homes and flipped cars in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area.

"I am in the closet with my 90-year-old mother," a man in suburban Sunrise told television station WFOR via telephone during the storm. "The roof literally came off my house... and blew across the street."

About 320 kilometres north of Miami, a boat crashed into the Titusville Bridge near the Kennedy Space Center, where Wilma's winds ripped a roof panel off the giant building in which space shuttles are prepared for flight.