Storm Fay drenches space shuttle's port in Florida

MELBOURNE, Florida (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Fay dumped torrential rain on central Florida on Wednesday, flooding streets in knee-high water as it stalled over the U.S. space shuttle fleet's home port at Cape Canaveral.

Hundreds of homes were affected, some flooded under 4 feet

of water, and emergency teams in airboats and boats spread out to rescue people as up to 21 inches of rain came down in a day, officials said.

"We've had a lot of flooding in isolated neighborhoods, people with anywhere from 6 inches to 4 feet (1.2 meters) of water in their homes," said Erick Gill, public information officer for St. Lucie County, just north of West Palm Beach.

"We've had just under 1,000 homes impacted by the flooding. We've had to rescue people in boats and airboats," Gill said. An airboat is a flat-bottomed vessel with an airplane propeller at the back and is useful in shallow water and swamps.

In Brevard County, where the Kennedy Space Center is located, emergency management spokeswoman Kimberly Prosser said some places had registered 21 inches of rain since Fay came ashore on Florida's southwest coast on Tuesday.

"We're getting beat on and beat on and beat on. It's still over us," said Deputy Jeff Luther, a spokesman for the emergency operations center and the sheriff's office in Indian River County, just south of Brevard.

The storm, which killed more than 50 people in the Caribbean before churning over Cuba, the Florida Keys and then reaching the Florida peninsula, was about 30 miles north-northeast of Cape Canaveral by 5 p.m. (2100 GMT), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

It was moving north at an excruciatingly slow 2 miles per hour (4 kph), meaning it would keep soaking central Florida for some time.

Fay is the sixth storm of what forecasters predict will be an unusually busy Atlantic hurricane season. It is not expected to become a hurricane and is forecast to turn back on itself and head west once more before dissipating over Alabama or Georgia.

'SERIOUS FLOODING EVENT'

Fay had threatened to become a hurricane with top sustained winds of at least 74 mph (119 kph) before crossing Key West at the end of the Florida Keys island chain on Monday and again on Tuesday before making a second U.S. landfall near Naples.

It then stunned hurricane experts by gaining strength over land, and appeared likely to threaten the United States for the third time as a potential hurricane once it emerged over water off the Atlantic coast.

Tropical storms need warm sea water for fuel and usually fall apart quite quickly once they come ashore.

On Wednesday, however, Fay's top winds did not rise above 50 mph (85 kph) and it appeared unlikely the storm would emerge far enough out over the Atlantic to strengthen significantly.

The only serious injury reported in Florida was a kite boarder who was picked up by a gust and slammed like a rag doll onto a beach and into a building in Fort Lauderdale. The storm was likely to be remembered mainly for its rainfall.

While the rain was much needed in a state where urban development in the past decade and a couple of relatively dry years have strained water supplies, Gov. Charlie Crist deemed it a disaster and sought federal emergency funds.

"This storm is turning into a serious, catastrophic flooding event, particularly in southern Brevard County," Crist told reporters.

(Additional reporting by Jim Loney, Jane Sutton and Michael Christie in Miami and Michael Peltier in Tallahassee; Editing by Peter Cooney)