Resilient storm Fay could hit Florida a third time

• IBTimes RSS
• Print
• E-Mail
• digg
• Del.icio.us

The storm killed more than 50 people in the Caribbean, most of them in Haiti when a crowded bus was carried away as it tried to cross a rain-swollen river.

In Florida, one of the few serious injuries occurred when a powerful wind gust picked up a man riding a kite board - a surf board attached to a large kite - like a rag doll and slammed him into the beach and then a nearby building in Fort Lauderdale.

The weather system toppled trees, signs and awnings in the low-lying Florida Keys island chain and uprooted trees and eroded beaches in the Miami area.

More than 111,400 utility customers in 32 Florida counties lost power due to the storm. Fay delayed the start of the school term in south Florida but classes were scheduled to resume on Wednesday.

Fay kept far away from U.S. oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Orange juice prices shot up on Monday on fears Fay could hit major citrus growing areas. But traders said the groves would have to be struck by several much stronger storms, as they were in 2004 and 2005, for fruit trees to be affected.

Florida was hit in 2004 and 2005 by a series of hurricanes, including Katrina before it went on to devastate New Orleans and kill 1,500 people on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

(Additional reporting by Scott Disavino in New York and Tom Brown and Jim Loney in Miami, editing by Patricia Zengerle)

• 1
• 2