Hurricane Lashes Florida; 10 Killed, Damage in Billions : Weather: Neighborhoods are flattened by winds up to 164 m.p.h. Bush declares a disaster area as several of the gulf states brace for storm’s possible second strike.

MIAMI — Striking in pre-dawn darkness, Hurricane Andrew ravaged South Florida Monday, leaving at least 13 persons dead here and in the Bahamas as well as a swath of destruction defying description and credible economic estimates.

The storm hit just south of Miami, leveling trees, snapping utility poles, ripping away rooftops, shattering windows and flattening neighborhoods. It was one of the most powerful hurricanes to strike a major metropolitan area. But for its compact size and rapid forward movement, its devastation would have been frightfully worse.

Ten of the dead were reported in Florida and the additional three in the Bahamas, where Andrew slammed ashore over the weekend. There was no immediate estimate of the number of injured, but throughout the day hospitals called for medical staff to report for duty to treat an evidently massive number of cuts, bruises, and broken bones.

After raking the Florida coastal area with gusts up to 164 m.p.h., Andrew crossed the Everglades and entered the Gulf of Mexico south of Naples, Fla., passing over the Marco Island resort area. The storm remained almost as strong as it had been when it struck Miami, and there was concern that it would gather even more force as it crossed the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Late Monday, its winds were still hitting 140 m.p.h. and it was moving westward at 18 miles an hour. Officials expected it to take a more northerly course, raising the possibility of a second landfall late today or early Wednesday. A hurricane watch was posted along the Gulf Coast from Mobile, Ala., to Sabine Pass, Tex.

Forecasters for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said such a second landfall is most likely between Pascagoula, Miss., and Vermillion, La. Halfway between is New Orleans, a city vulnerable to hurricanes because some of it is below sea level.

A second assault on a heavily developed area could make Andrew--the Atlantic’s first tropical storm of 1992 and already a multibillion-dollar catastrophe--the most expensive hurricane in history.

President Bush, who earlier in the day had declared Dade, Broward and Monroe counties a federal disaster area, arrived for a firsthand look at the damage late Monday. The Administration made $50 million available, although damage costs could hit $6 billion to $8 billion, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said.

“This is just the beginning,” Fitzwater declared.

Bush told reporters: “My heart goes out to the people.”

From his campaign headquarters in Little Rock, Ark., Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton issued a statement calling for contributions from all Americans to hurricane relief. “I express deep concern for those in Florida who have been affected by Hurricane Andrew,” he said, “and extend sympathy to the families of those who lost their lives.”

As night fell, sporadic looting was reported, notably in Cutler Ridge in Dade County. An all-night curfew was imposed on the county. Some 1,500 National Guardsmen were activated to help police with security. Three battalions en route from the north were delayed by traffic jams caused by the return of thousands of residents, who had taken refuge elsewhere.

What residents found when they returned to their homes was unspeakable devastation.

After helicopter flights over southern Dade County, Gov. Lawton Chiles and Lt. Gov. Buddy McKay described houses flattened like sandcastles. McKay said that he gasped at the sight of mobile home neighborhoods where nearly every residence had been wiped out.

“This is total devastation,” he said. “I don’t see a single structure that doesn’t have significant damage.”

Other reports of damage were legion.

Homestead Air Force Base was essentially destroyed. Roofs were ripped off most hangars and administrative buildings and some 200 housing units were left in shambles.

Most aircraft at the base were flown out of harm’s way to bases in the north. But Navy Cmdr. Mike Thurwanger said in Washington that two F-16 fighters were destroyed when a hangar door swung onto them.

A Florida West jetliner was hurled through a fence at Miami airport, according to news reports. In addition, water 30 inches deep filled the sunken lobby at the Fountainbleu Hilton hotel, and boats were chucked out of their moorings and onto the streets like corks blown out of Biscayne Bay.

A nuclear power plant at Turkey Point was brushed by the eye of the storm, the news reports said. It had been closed before the winds hit and was considered safe. But a tank ruptured at a nearby oil-fired power plant and spilled 12,000 gallons of fuel.

Andrew struck the Florida coast about 4:30 a.m. with sustained winds of 138 m.p.h. The 20-mile-wide eye passed directly over the National Hurricane Center at Coral Cables, which recorded a gust of 164 m.p.h.

The center, where forecasters tracked the storm, had a huge radar antenna blown off the top of its 12-story building. Windows were blown out of its sixth-story operations facility. The center was concerned later Monday, fearing that disabled air conditioning would cause its computers to overheat.

In that event, officials said, the task of tracking Andrew would be turned over to a backup center at Silver Spring, Md.

More than 1 million residents of Dade and Broward counties were without electrical power at midday, and residents of nearly every community on the state’s southeastern coast were told they must boil their water before it would be safe for drinking or cooking.

Thousands of those evacuated began returning to their homes to pick up the pieces late Monday morning. But the dozens of shelters, which had taken in many of the 650,000 people who fled their homes, remained open.

Officials announced that all Dade and Broward County schools would remain closed for the rest of the week. Both Miami International Airport and the Ft. Lauderdale airport remained closed, but officials said that they might be opened to traffic sometime today.

From southern Miami and Coral Gables’ Miracle Mile, Andrew’s worst destruction stretched through southern Dade County and the communities of Cutler Ridge, Kendall, Homestead, and Florida City.

Throughout the area, trees were uprooted by the thousands, many of them crashing onto houses and automobiles. At least one of the Florida deaths was caused when a tree fell onto a house.

The sweep of the utter destruction became clear hours after the storm had passed when helicopters with live television cameras got into the air.

With chilling impact, live pictures showed mobile home neighborhoods where it appeared that nearly every residence had exploded, yachts overturned and grounded behind waterfront mansions and bedclothes and furniture littering balconies of high-rise condominiums where they had been sucked through shattered glass.

Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), a former governor, flew over the area Monday afternoon and later estimated that 90% of the homes in Homestead had been rendered uninhabitable.

The winds, sustained at more than 100 m.p.h. at the height of the storm in that area, overturned buses and automobiles, knocked down heavy signs on Interstate 95 and destroyed street lights wholesale.

With the storm striking near high tide, there had been as much concern over the danger of flooding as there was over wind damage.

But because the storm was traveling forward at some 20 m.p.h, it cleared the area without causing the disastrous surge from the ocean that had been feared, and Miami International Airport recorded nowhere near the 10 inches of rain that it expected.

Nevertheless, the storm surge carried water across a low seawall at Ft. Lauderdale and apparently into areas south of Miami as well. When the water receded not long after dawn, a stretch of U.S. Highway A1A was covered by sand.

Before Andrew’s arrival, the famed hotels and retirement condominiums of Miami Beach were evacuated, as was much of downtown Miami.

Both were spared the kind of damage wrought on the area to the south, although tropical storm-force winds reached out 140 miles from the eye of the storm.

In Palm Beach, the famed Breakers’ Hotel and the mansions along Millionaires Row were battered but survived without extensive damage.

At 5 p.m. Monday, residents and business owners from Miami Beach were allowed to return for the first time, and created a monumental traffic jam on all of the bridges leading to the beach.

But the luxurious Key Biscayne community in South Miami, on the northern edge of the most severe damage, remained closed.

Far to the south, the Florida Keys escaped the devastation visited on Dade and Broward counties, but they also took a pounding.

On Saturday, well ahead of the storm, about half the residents of the Keys had heeded warnings and gone to the mainland. They were being allowed to return late Monday upon presentation of proof of residence at the entrance to the bridge from the mainland.

They were also being cautioned that they would find water shortages and spotty electrical service when they reached their homes.

In spite of hours of warnings, many thousands of residents rode out the storm in their homes. Some who appeared at hospitals shortly after dawn on Monday were emotionally as well as physically shaken, recounting horrors of roofs being blown away, windows shattered and trees uprooted as the storm battered its way west.

Security could not be taken for granted even in the shelters. At Miami Dade Community College, the roof of a gymnasium sheltering storm refugees cracked, forcing occupants to find safety elsewhere in the building.

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