Troops to Urge Florida Victims to Leave Homes : Recovery: Residents who balk can stay in hurricane-damaged houses, but may have no electricity. More rain is expected over weekend.

Federal officials pledged Friday to send soldiers door-to-door in a renewed effort to get victims of Hurricane Andrew out of their severely damaged homes and into tent cities.

Dade County officials, meanwhile, gradually lifted nightly curfews ahead of the Labor Day weekend, and residents braced for more rain, which had already caved in roofs and ceilings damaged by the hurricane.

“We’re trying to convince the people to get out of homes that are dangerous,” said Transportation Secretary Andrew H. Card Jr., who is heading the U.S. government relief effort.

Alex Muxo, the city manager of Homestead, Fla., said 80% of the 400 buildings inspected there to date had been declared unsafe. Muxo’s own home was among those leveled by the Aug. 24 storm.

Residents in Homestead who remain in their damaged homes are being allowed to stay, but the city will not connect electricity until the buildings are repaired, said Ann Marie Gothard, a municipal spokeswoman.

“They’re not trying to drag people out of their homes,” she said. “It’s just a matter of, ‘Do you want to live in the dark?’ ”

Card spent Thursday night in a tent city built by the military in Homestead.

“The night was wet but not inside the tent,” Card said. “I got a good night’s sleep.”

Storm victims have complained that the tent cities are damp, mosquito-infested and located too far from their damaged homes. At one tent city that has more than 1,100 cots, fewer than 300 people were registered Thursday night.

Officials said the tent cities were virtually empty Friday as the military rigged and strung bare bulbs in them. More troops arrived to bolster the 16,000 others already there.

“I don’t know whether we’ll fill it (a tent city), but more people will drift in as homes start to collapse and as homes are condemned,” Marine Capt. Cathy Engels said.

Red Cross officials said more mothers and children were coming to the tent cities, leaving fathers behind to protect property from looters.

Weather forecasters predicted more showers during the weekend, with heavy rain possible today.

Florida Power & Light Co. officials said full electric service for south Dade County, which was hit hardest by the hurricane, was still “weeks away.”

A “boil-water” order, implemented countywide to protect residents from contaminated tap water, has been lifted in many areas. But residents in south Dade County are still drinking bottled, boiled or chemically purified water.

In Miami and some northern suburbs, business owners complained about the curfew, which has restricted nighttime traffic on roads littered with fallen wire, trees and non-working traffic signals and street lights.

“It’s absurd, absolutely absurd and uncalled-for to have a curfew in areas where there are no hardships,” pub owner Jay Love said. “They’re putting thousands of people out of work in areas not affected by the hurricane.”

Public school officials announced that students will lose their spring break next year to make up for a two-week delay in the start of the school year. Classes are scheduled to begin Sept. 14. Thousands of students whose neighborhood schools were heavily damaged also will face long daily bus trips to other schools.

The American Red Cross said preliminary damage estimates show that the hurricane damaged or destroyed 97,000 homes in Florida and 14,000 in Louisiana. The agency estimates that its relief costs will exceed $65 million.

The Army Corps of Engineers said it will spend $100 million or more just to remove garbage or debris in the storm-ravaged area.

A different kind of cleanup occurred Friday at the Turkey Point Power Plant 30 miles south of Miami. A 415-foot-tall smokestack cracked by the hurricane’s winds along nearly half its height was demolished in a controlled blast that toppled it like a tree.

Florida Power & Light officials said the stack, which vented the complex’s fossil-fuel generating plant, was a safety hazard to workers. The leaning stack had posed no danger to nuclear reactors 350 feet away, utility spokesman Ray Golden said.

The nuclear reactors, designed to withstand 250-m.p.h. gusts, survived the hurricane intact, but other buildings and nearby power lines suffered an estimated $100 million in damage, Golden said.

He added that it will be weeks before the first of the plant’s two fossil-fuel units is operating again, and at least two months before the two nuclear reactors are restarted.

A Soggy September

Storms have hindered the hurricane cleanup in Miami, where September is the second-rainiest month. Forecasters expect another band of intense thunderstorms to arrive today. The area receives about 57 inches of rain a year, compared to Los Angeles’ 15.

Miami’s Average Monthly Totals January: 2.08 February: 2.05 March: 1.89 April: 3.07 May: 6.53 June: 9.15 July: 5.9 August: 7.02 September: 8.07 October: 7.14 November: 2.71 December: 1.86 Source: WeatherData Inc.