Storm hits Florida Keys and threatens mainland

By Michael Haskins

KEY WEST, Florida (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Fay swept over the Florida Keys with heavy rain and 60 mile per hour (97 km per hour) winds and churned toward the Florida mainland on Monday after killing more than 50 people in the Caribbean.

The sixth storm of the 2008 Atlantic season did not reach hurricane strength before rolling across the vulnerable, low-lying Florida island chain, where authorities reported minor flooding.

But forecasters said it would likely be at or near hurricane force -- top sustained winds of 74 miles per hour (119 km per hour) -- when it strikes the west coast of Florida on Tuesday, somewhere near the beach resort area of Fort Myers, the Miami-based U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Although its path was far from U.S. oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, some energy companies pulled workers from offshore platforms. Orange juice futures prices shot up on fears Fay could hit Florida's main citrus growing areas.

In Key West, the tourist-dependent party town and southernmost city in Florida where Ernest Hemingway wrote many of his novels, the mood was typically nonchalant.

Jim Garland's neighbors brought their drinks to the deck of his 35-foot (11-metre) trawler, Ilene, at Garrison Bight marina to celebrate the passage of the storm.

"I flew in two days ago to prepare the boat," said Garland, of Biloxi, Mississippi, who was on the trawler when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast three years ago. "Not much to do on a dock like this but add extra lines and make sure the boat can rise and fall with the tide."

The popular Hog's Breath Saloon was one bar that closed down due to the poor weather. But many restaurants remained open even as the wind began to pick up and a driving rain started to blow through the streets.

"This isn't a hurricane. If the media wasn't down here hyping this up, this would be a non-event," grumbled Key West Island Books proprietor Marshall Smith.

VISITORS OUT

The authorities in the archipelago had ordered visitors to evacuate on Sunday, creating bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highway out of the islands on the state's tip. By Monday the traffic had thinned considerably, police said.

The lost revenue would hurt the tourism-dependent Keys, said Karen Thurman, marketing manager for the Grand Key DoubleTree Resort on South Roosevelt Boulevard.

"But we must err on the side of caution," she said. "After seeing what happened in New Orleans, and that area, I think early evacuation of visitors is important for safety, especially in the Keys, where we only have one road out. Lives are more important than revenue."

New Orleans was swamped in August 2005 by Katrina, which killed 1,500 people on the U.S. Gulf Coast and became the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history.

Across Florida at least 22 school districts, a handful of community colleges and one university canceled Tuesday's classes and Gov. Charlie Crist warned residents not to develop "hurricane amnesia."