Storm threat to Florida eases

MIAMI - The threat Tropical Storm Ernesto posed to Florida diminished today as it failed to gain strength over warm waters, but forecasters issued new hurricane alerts for the US East Coast later in the week.

Ernesto, the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season's fifth storm, could regain hurricane strength after it emerges off northeast Florida and curves back into land between Georgia and North Carolina, the US National Hurricane Centre said.

Forecasters dropped hurricane alerts for Florida as Ernesto brought mainly rain to Miami and Fort Lauderdale, where residents formed long lines at gas stations, emptied stores of batteries and filled sandbags on the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

"We're going to have a mediocre tropical storm come through," said the hurricane centre's director Max Mayfield, who became a familiar face to Americans after Katrina flooded most of New Orleans, killed about 1,500 people and caused US$80 billion in damage a year ago.

State officials had declared a state of emergency in Florida as the storm approached. Tourists were ordered out of the low-lying Florida Keys as the first rain squalls whipped ashore and law courts and schools were closed. Some airlines cancelled flights and ports were shut.

Authorities, while voicing words of caution about the need for storm preparations, signalled that they were not expecting much damage from Ernesto.

"This does not look like a catastrophic event but we always want to be ready," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in Tallahassee after meeting Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

The US space agency Nasa, which had initially cancelled a planned launch of the space shuttle Atlantis from its Florida launch pad to bring the spaceship into shelter, reversed course and began to roll the $2 billion ship back out.

Keys residents nervous

At 8 pm (1pm NZT), Ernesto's winds were still at 72 kph, hours after the storm left the mountains of Cuba, where it had initially lost some intensity. Ernesto killed two people in Haiti on Sunday after briefly becoming the season's first hurricane with winds of at least 119 kph.

The storm's centre was 24 km southeast of Islamorada in the Florida Keys island chain, or about 113 km south of Miami. Ernesto was moving northwest at 21 kph.

Tropical storms feed on warm waters, and the hurricane centre's specialists said they were "slightly puzzled" that Ernesto had not gained power in the Florida Straits.

Along the Overseas Highway that connects the Florida Keys to the mainland, residents parked their cars near bridges where they would be above any storm surge.

"People are scared because of Wilma," said Ada Martinez, a Monroe County shelter manager at the Sugarloaf High School, referring to last October's hurricane that flooded 3,700 of the 15,000 homes in the town of Key West.

In Miami, long lines formed for a second day at gas stations as residents filled their cars in anticipation of widespread power outages, which would prevent most petrol stations from pumping gas.

After passing over much of the Florida peninsula, Ernesto could reemerge over the Atlantic and make a second landfall in South or North Carolina, becoming a hurricane again on the way, the hurricane centre said.

It issued a hurricane watch for coastal areas from north of Altamaha Sound in Georgia to Cape Fear in North Carolina.

- REUTERS