Hurricane Wilma races across Florida, knocking out power to 6 million

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Hurricane Wilma knifed through Florida with winds up to 125 mph Monday, shattering windows in skyscrapers, peeling away roofs and knocking out power to 6 million people, with still a month left to go in the busiest Atlantic storm season on record.\nAt least six deaths were blamed on the hurricane in Florida, bringing the toll from the storm's march through the tropics to 25.\nAfter a slow, weeklong journey that saw it pound Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula for two days, Wilma made a mercifully swift seven-hour dash across lower Florida, from its southwestern corner to heavily populated Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach on the Atlantic coast.\n"We have been huddled in the living room trying to stay away from the windows. It got pretty violent there for a while," said 25-year-old Eddie Kenny, who was at his parents' home in Plantation near Fort Lauderdale. "We have trees down all over the place and two fences have been totally demolished, crushed, gone."\nThe insurance industry estimated insured losses in Florida at anywhere from $2 billion to $9 billion. Officials said it was the most damaging storm to hit the Fort Lauderdale area since 1950.\nThe 21st storm of the 2005 season -- and the eighth hurricane to hit Florida in 15 months -- howled ashore around daybreak just south of Marco Island as a Category 3, cutting electricity to the entire Florida Keys. A tidal surge of up to nine feet swamped parts of Key West in chest-high water, and U.S. 1, the only highway to the mainland, was flooded.\n"A bunch of us that are the old-time Key Westers are kind of waking up this morning, going, 'Well, maybe I should have paid a little more attention,'" said restaurant owner Amy Culver-Aversa, among the 90 percent of Key West residents who chose to ignore the fourth mandatory evacuation order this year.\nAs it moved across the state, Wilma weakened to a Category 2 with winds of 105 mph. But it was still powerful enough to flatten trees, flood streets, break water mains, knock down signs, turn debris into missiles and light up the sky with the blue-green flash of popping transformers.\nBy early afternoon, Wilma had swirled out into the open Atlantic, back up to 115-mph Category 3 strength but on a course unlikely to have much effect on the East Coast. Forecasters said it would stay well offshore.\nWilma brought eight inches of rain to Miami-Dade County, nearly 6 1/2 to Naples and three to Fort Lauderdale. The flooding could well have been worse if the storm had lingered over the state instead of racing straight through, National Hurricane Center meteorologist Mark McInerney said.\n"There's really no good scenario for a hurricane. Just a lesser of two evils," he said.\nMore than one-third of the state's residents lost power. Florida Power & Light, the state's biggest utility, said it could take weeks to restore electricity to everyone.\nThe storm's reach was so great that it blacked out homes and businesses as far north as Daytona Beach, an eight-hour drive north from Key West. Also, a tornado spun off by the storm damaged an apartment complex near Melbourne on the east coast, 200 miles from where Wilma came ashore.\nIn Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Miami Beach, countless windows were blown out of high-rises. Along downtown Miami's Brickell Avenue, broken glass from skyscrapers littered streets and sidewalks. Broken water mains in the Fort Lauderdale area prompted advisories to boil water, and a ruptured main in downtown Miami sprayed water 15 feet in the air.\nThe Broward County Courthouse and the 14-story school board office complex looked like bombed-out buildings.\nThe Miami police department building lost some letters on its sign.\n"It was a wild and crazy night," Lt. Bill Schwartz said. "This building, built in 1976, shook like it was 1876."\nIn Weston, near Fort Lauderdale, Kim DuBois sat in her darkened house with her two children and husband, with the only light coming from the battery-powered pumpkin lantern they bought for Halloween.\n"I could hear tiles coming off the roof," she said. "There are trees on cars and flooding at the end of our street."\nIn the snowbird enclave Marco Island, where only about 3,000 of the 15,000 residents were believed to have stayed for the storm, the streets were littered with damaged street signs, roofing shingles, awnings and fences.\nThe storm impressed even amateur hurricane chaser Josh Morgerman. A marketing executive from Los Angeles, Morgerman flew to Tampa on Saturday to meet the storm, left Naples as the eye passed and drove to Everglades City.\n"It was very serene and there were birds flying," a wet and shivering Morgerman said. "And then when we got here and got out of the car, it was like a rocket went off."\nA man in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Coral Springs died when a tree fell on him. Another man in rural Collier County died when his roof collapsed on him or a tree fell on his roof. In Palm Beach County, a man went to move his van and was killed when debris smashed him into the windshield.\nAlso, an 83-year-old St. Johns County woman died in a weekend car crash while evacuating. A man in Collier County had a fatal heart attack while walking in the storm. An 82-year-old woman in Boynton Beach died after a sliding glass door in her living room fell on her as she looked out.\nWilma also killed at least six people in Mexico and 13 others in Jamaica and Haiti as it made its way across the Caribbean.