Gulf Coast Braces for Katrina’s Next Strike

One day after Katrina delivered a soggy surprise wallop to some of Miami’s southwestern suburbs, where streets and neighborhoods were underwater Friday, emergency planners were bracing for a potential second landfall by the hurricane as an even more dangerous storm.

After crossing the southern tip of the Florida peninsula, where its winds and downpours Thursday evening led to widespread street flooding and at least seven deaths, Katrina reached the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters, where it absorbed enough energy to boost its sustained winds to 100 mph. Forecasters said the Category 2 hurricane might intensify as it turned north and headed toward the Gulf Coast.

“We are looking at a major hurricane: a strong Category 3 or perhaps a 4 at landfall,” said Ben Nelson, state meteorologist for the Florida Division of Emergency Management in Tallahassee. “We expect it to hit landfall sometime on Monday.” A Category 3 hurricane carries highly destructive sustained winds of 111 to 130 mph; a Category 4 has winds of 131 to 155 mph.

As Katrina’s course stood Friday, the storm could make its second landfall anywhere from Florida’s Big Bend region to New Orleans, Nelson said.

In Florida’s Panhandle, officials and residents were warily monitoring what could become the third big hurricane to strike the area in less than a year. The region was hammered in 2004 by Hurricane Ivan, and last month by Hurricane Dennis.

“We’re still cleaning up the debris from Hurricane Dennis,” Sonya Smith, spokeswoman for Florida’s Escambia County, said from Pensacola. “There are still tree limbs on the roadside and homes with blue [tarp] roofs. We have buildings which have lost one, even two walls that haven’t been repaired. It’s just been too soon.”

In Homestead, Kendall, Naranja, Goulds and other southern Miami suburbs, streets, parking lots and some homes remained flooded Friday with tepid water left by Katrina.

Then a Category 1 hurricane, the storm moved westward most of Thursday but took an unexpected southerly jog, catching many residents of southern Miami-Dade County unawares. They had been counting on the storm to soak Fort Lauderdale and other areas in Broward County to the north.

“I never expected to feel it,” said Dio Guzman, 37, a tool salesman from the Dominican Republic. Katrina left 2 inches of water in his car, he said.

The hurricane’s heaviest rainfall, 13 1/4 inches, was registered by a rain gauge in Homestead, the South Florida Water Management District said. Elsewhere in Miami-Dade County, between 6 and 10 inches of rain fell.

As of 6 p.m. Friday, some western areas of the county remained underwater, said Jose Fuentes, director of the Water Management District’s Miami service center.

At midday Friday, Megan Janosky, 11, ventured out on her bicycle with her father and older brother to survey the snapped-off palm trees, missing shingles and other damage in Country Walk, the bedroom community where they live. The water in the street was so deep that at one point, said the sixth-grader, she could immerse her bike’s 2-foot-high front wheel.

The storm blew the Janosky family’s trampoline 30 feet into the air before it crashed in a neighbor’s yard three houses away, Megan’s brother Michael Jr., 15, said. And a 9-year-old acquaintance was injured, he said, when an avocado, transformed into a missile by the winds, crashed though a window and struck him on the arm.

“We weren’t supposed to be hit. This was supposed to be Broward’s storm,” said Michael Janosky Sr., 45. The family had been on their patio Thursday, experiencing what they thought were the fringes of the hurricane, until the steadily rising winds and alarming crack of snapping tree limbs sent them inside.

“I was so scared I was crying,” Megan said.

Country Walk, like some other areas of southern Miami-Dade doused by Katrina, was also blasted in 1992 by Andrew, the most destructive hurricane on record, which left $25.5 billion worth of property damage in its wake as it cut across Florida south of Miami.

In 2002, Andrew was reclassified as a Category 5, the most powerful rating on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.

Katrina turned out to be an unpleasant experience, “but it was no Andrew,” said the elder Janosky, a construction manager.

Three boaters died in the Miami area, one from injuries suffered when Katrina tossed around his 25-foot boat, and two others after their houseboat capsized in the storm.

Broward County authorities reported four hurricane-related fatalities: an elderly woman hit by a falling tree in Davie, a 79-year-old man killed in a car crash in Cooper City, a 25-year-old man crushed by a falling tree as he sat in his car in Fort Lauderdale, and a Plantation man struck by a tree as he surveyed storm damage to his home.

Sporadic rain continued throughout South Florida on Friday, and authorities advised people to stay off the streets, many of which were littered by tree branches and other debris.

“At this point, the roads have been cleared, but only for emergency personnel,” said Veda Coleman-Wright, a spokeswoman for the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. “We are encouraging people to stay at home for their own safety. You just can’t see downed power lines. You can’t see the danger that lurks underneath.”

More than 1 million homes and businesses were without power. “At the height of the storm, 1.4 million customers were impacted,” said Steve Stengel, a spokesman for Florida Power & Light.

By Friday midmorning, Stengel said, a field force of 11,700 linemen, tree trimmers and other personnel had managed to restore electricity to about 300,000 businesses and homes.

For Lymari Lugo, 23, a teacher at a day-care center, the hurricane may be enough to send her back to Santa Ana, where she lived until last year. Carpeting in the ground-floor apartment Lugo and eight other people share at the Villages of Naranja was soaked by flooding. Water in the apartment complex’s parking lot came halfway up cars’ tires. Cars passing in the streets kicked up wakes like motorboats.

In storms last year, Lugo’s apartment also suffered water damage, she said. As Katrina approached Florida, the day-care center where Lugo works closed, depriving her of at least two days’ pay, she added. “I’m thinking about going back to California,” she said with a tired smile.

On Thursday, a family of five were reported missing after they attempted to travel on a 24-foot boat from Marathon in the Florida Keys to Cape Coral on the Gulf Coast. On Friday, the Coast Guard announced they had been rescued.

Edward and Tina Larsen and their children, 17, 14 and 4, were found off Everglades City on a mangrove island, the Coast Guard said. They were rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter and flown to Fort Myers. The family, in good condition and not needing medical attention, was being interviewed by the Coast Guard to determine how they were stranded.

Katrina also collapsed an overpass being built over one of Miami’s major east-west expressways. There were initial reports that a motorist might have been trapped under rubble, but search dogs found nothing, said Lt. Eric Baum of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue.

Jarvie reported from Atlanta and Dahlburg from Florida.