Hurricane Frances nears Florida

September 4, 2004 - 5:26PM

A woman clutches her grandchildren while she braves a rush of strong winds in Miami.

Hurricane Frances, weaker but still massive, inched toward Florida late today after delivering a long battering to the Bahamas.

Frances brought down power and phone lines, flooded coastal roads and and blew the the roof off an airline building as it churned through Nassau, the Bahamas' capital.

In Florida, where hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes and much of the state shut down, the storm moved closer with winds of 105 mph (170 kph).

The winds were down from 140 mph (225 kph) on Thursday, but the storm remained large and potentially destructive.

The hurricane's outer bands began to spin off and lash southeast Florida Friday, said Max Mayfield, director of the US National Hurricane Center.

The storm's main core was expected to hit Florida late on Saturday, but blinding rain and hurricane-force winds were expected well before then, forecasters said.

The storm was so big and slow-moving that it would take until Sunday night for it to cross the state, they said.

''When it does come on shore, it's going to really batter people for a long period of time,'' Mayfield said. ''We still need to just hunker down.''

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The winds downed trees and knocked out power 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 will not venture out again until the storm passes, a Florida Power and Light spokeswoman said.

Gasoline stations throughout Florida ran out of fuel, and storm shelters filled up as authorities ordered 2.5 million people, the most ever told to leave in Florida, to evacuate mobile homes, low-lying coastal areas and barrier islands.

Most airports across the state halted flights or closed. Municipalities imposed curfews to keep people off the roads at night as the weather worsened.

Frances began battering the 700-island chain of the Bahamas on Thursday.

A teenager was killed in Nassau Friday while trying to fix an electrical generator outside his home.

The roof of the national airline's office was ripped off at Nassau International Airport.

Coastal roads were covered with sand as storm water sloshed ashore, and boats broke free of their moorings and smashed together.

In Freeport on Grand Bahama Island, the winds felled trees onto parked cars.

Forecasters projected a storm surge as high as 12 feet above normal tide levels on the north side of Grand Bahama.

By 2 a.m EDT (0600 GMT), the center of the hurricane was about 45 miles (70 km) east of Freeport, and 135 miles (215 km) east of West Palm beach in south Florida, the National Hurricane Center said.

It was drifting northwest at 6 mph (9 kph), and forecasters said the slower it moved, the greater the chance it would bring dangerous flooding. Frances was expected to pour up to 20 inches (50 cm) of rain on Florida.

Although weaker than before, the storm remained a strong Category 2 hurricane on the five-step scale of intensity, meaning it could still cause damage, especially to fragile structures such as mobile homes.

''I don't figure on anything being here when I get back. Mother Nature - she's unforgiving,'' said mobile home owner Tom Walker, 56, as he loaded belongings into a camper van at a large mobile home park in Micco, Florida, close to where Frances was forecast to whirl ashore.

Frances loomed over the peninsula just three weeks after Charley caused $7.4 billion in insured losses and killed more than 20 people.

Almost all of the Florida east coast was under a hurricane warning, reviving memories of Hurricane Andrew, the most costly US storm in history, which ravaged the Miami area in 1992 and caused $25 billion in damages.

Florida's most populous areas were at risk, including Tampa and tourist center Orlando.

Disney World and other central Florida theme parks were closed for Saturday. Kennedy Space Center secured its three space shuttles.

- Reuters