Wilma pounds storm-scarred Florida, kills four

MIAMI, Tuesday (Reuters) Hurricane Wilma swamped and pounded southern Florida on Monday, killing four as it shattered high-rise windows, uprooted trees, destroyed mobile homes and cut power to almost 7 million people.

Risk assessment companies said the storm caused up to $10 billion in insured damages after smashing into southwest Florida as a surprisingly strong Category 3 hurricane, having fed on the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico after killing 17 people in a rampage through the Caribbean.

At one point the fiercest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, it flooded the low-lying Florida Keys, then hit the mainland south of the fast-growing retirement city of Naples and sped across the Everglades to the populous Miami-Fort Lauderdale area on the Atlantic Coast.

"It sounded like a freight train driven by the devil, that's what it sounded like," said Rob Lerner, 35, who stayed on his houseboat in North Bay Village in Miami before the howling of the wind and the crashing of splintering boats drove him onto land.

Four deaths were confirmed in Florida, including a man crushed by a falling tree in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Coral Springs. Two people died in Collier County in southwest Florida and one in St. Johns County in northeast Florida.

Florida Power & Light, the state's main electricity provider, said 3.2 million customers, or nearly 7 million people, were without power, and could spend days if not weeks without refrigerators, air conditioning and running water.

The surging sea rose over the Overseas Highway linking the 110-mile (175-km) Florida Keys island chain to the mainland, and officials in Marathon said residents were stranded on rooftops while leaking propane tanks and gas lines caused small explosions.

Monica Rivadeneira, 34, retreated to a closet when Wilma's winds whipped concrete blocks against her Miami Beach apartment building. "I took a book and a light and my cell phone and I called everybody I knew from the closet," she said. "It was wild. The wind was howling."

Miami International Airport suffered damage that will likely keep it closed for several days, said Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez. Miami-Dade officials said only 18 of the county's 5,600 traffic signals were working.

Fears of an outburst of looting like the lawlessness that occurred after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans at the end of August prompted authorities in several Florida counties to declare curfews. A handful of people were arrested for looting.

Several hospitals were damaged or lost power. At least three evacuated patients after the storm passed, including 36 newborns from West Boca Hospital in Palm Beach County.

Wilma, a sprawling hurricane that covered much of Florida, was the eighth hurricane to strike the state in 15 months, an unprecedented display of nature's fury that climatologists say is the result of the Atlantic having swung back into a period of heightened storm activity that could last 20 years.

"This ain't our first rodeo," Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings told reporters in Tallahassee. "We have a lot of experience ... But the rest of the story will not be as quick as the storm."

More than 3,100 National Guard troops were deployed and 3,500 more were on alert.