Stengthening Fay menaces Florida

By Michael Haskins

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUKN1546080820080818?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

KEY WEST, Florida (Reuters) - Store owners boarded up their windows but few Florida Keys residents appeared inclined to flee as Tropical Storm Fay strengthened on its way to the islands on Monday after killing more than 50 people in the Caribbean.

The sixth storm of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season was expected to refuel over the warm waters of the Florida Straits before striking the low-lying and flood-prone Keys later in the day, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

It was forecast to be near hurricane strength, with top sustained winds near 74 miles per hour (119 km per hour), when it reaches the Keys, and a hurricane when it strikes the west coast of Florida in mid-week, the Miami-based hurricane center said in an advisory.

Although its likely path was far from U.S. oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, some energy companies pulled workers from offshore platforms. Orange juice futures prices shot up on fears Fay could hit the main citrus growing areas of central Florida.

In Key West, the southernmost U.S. city, where Ernest Hemingway wrote many of his novels, the mood was the typically nonchalant expectation that a strong storm or weak hurricane was unlikely to pose a serious threat.

Restaurants and banks remained open, but some shopkeepers began boarding up and the authorities had ordered visitors to evacuate, creating bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highway out of the islands on the state's tip.

The lost revenue would hurt the tourism-dependent Keys, said Karen Thurman, marketing manager for the Grand Key DoubleTree Resort on South Roosevelt Boulevard.

"But we must err on the side of caution," she said. "After seeing what happened in New Orleans, and that area, I think early evacuation of visitors is important for safety, especially in the Keys, where we only have one road out. Lives are more important than revenue." 

New Orleans was swamped in August 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, which became the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history and killed 1,500 people on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

DEATHS IN THE CARIBBEAN

By 11 a.m. EDT (4:00 p.m. British time) on Monday, Fay was located around 70 miles (115 km) south-southeast of Key West and its top sustained winds were at 60 mph (95 kph).

It was moving north-northwest at 13 mph (20 kph) and expected to curve eventually to the northeast into Florida's west coast. Densely populated Miami-Fort Lauderdale in the southeast of the state could expect heavy rains and gusts.

Fay swept into Cuba southeast of Havana. Residents along its path said heavy rains had fallen for only an hour. Cuban officials evacuated low-lying parts of Havana, but the storm produced only a mild breeze and intermittent showers.

In Haiti, officials said about 50 people died when a bus tried to cross a river swollen by rain. Five others were known dead in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and two died in Jamaica when their car was caught in a flooded crossing.

Hurricane warnings were in effect for the Keys and southwest Florida and the state deployed 500 National Guard troops. Schools in south Florida cancelled the first day back to class after the summer break.

"This is not Charley. This is not a well formed hurricane," said Craig Fugate, Florida's director of emergency management, referring to a 2004 hurricane that reached Category 4 strength on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale before slamming into Florida's west coast with devastating force.

"This isn't the type of storm that's going to rip off a lot of roofs," he said at a news conference, adding, however, that people could still die if they underestimated the risks of floods, tornadoes and downed power lines.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Franks and Marc Frank in Havana, Michael Christie and Tom Brown in Miami, and Rene Pastor in New York, Editing by Patricia Zengerle)