Hurricane Jeanne peeled roofs off houses, a hospital and an emergency shelter and left almost 2 million people without power today as it plowed through parts of Florida already scarred by Hurricane Frances three weeks ago.
Jeanne, a record fourth hurricane strike for the state in a single storm season, weakened slowly as it moved inland after pounding the Atlantic coast with towering waves and ferocious winds, killing at least one person and uprooting trees.
Dawn broke over towns littered with tree limbs, scraps of aluminum, strips of roof and other debris. In some areas, cars stood in fender-deep floodwaters.
At 12 p.m. Irish time, the storm was hammering central Florida with 100-mph winds and driving rain as it slowly unraveled 65 miles east-southeast of Tampa.
At the height of the storm, 300 people with special needs, such as the elderly or infirm, had to be evacuated from an emergency shelter in Brevard County after Jeanne began to rip off the roof, a spokeswoman for the county's emergency management agency said.
A truck driver died after his tractor-trailer was flipped over and crushed by strong winds.
Jeanne's eye made landfall just before midnight close to the spot where Frances hit -- near the southern end of Hutchinson Island just off Stuart. As it swept ashore, the storm bore winds of 120 mph.
It was still too dangerous to go out and assess the damage, said Mr Tom Christopher, an emergency planner in St. Lucie County, which bore the brunt of the storm.
But he said the damage could be extensive because many buildings had already been weakened by Frances on September 5th.
Stuart Mayor Mr Jeff Krauskopf said a hospital lost half its roof but the 50 patients inside were safe. He said the howling of the wind outside his house was hellish.
At the latest count around two million people were without power according to a spokeswoman for Florida Power & Light, the area's largest utility company. The company has said it could take up to three weeks to restore full service.
In the last six weeks, Florida has been hit by hurricanes Charley, which slammed into the southwest Gulf Coast on August 13th, Frances on September 5th, and Ivan, which roared onto the Gulf Coast between Florida and Alabama on September 16th.
Those storms left 108 people dead in the United States and up to $17.8 billion in insured losses.
It was the first time since recordkeeping began in 1851 that four hurricanes hit Florida during the same Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June through November.
Jeanne's winds and 8-foot storm surge earlier lashed the northern Bahamas island chain of 300,000 people.
As a tropical storm, Jeanne caused floods that killed as many as 2,000 people in Haiti and 31 in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico a week ago.