US: Floridians queued for petrol, water, ice and money yesterday, and power crews worked to restore electricity to 5½ million people as the state's most populous region slowly recovered from Hurricane Wilma.
Lights reappeared in many of the office towers in downtown Miami and the city recalled employees to work, despite having no power at City Hall. But for many of the five million people in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metropolitan area, life was still a tedious wait for basics.
Truck convoys moved through the stricken region, carrying workers who righted power poles, hacked up fallen trees and replaced downed lines.
Wilma killed five people in Florida on Monday and one in the Bahamas after a damaging trek through the Caribbean, where 17 people died in Haiti and Mexico.
Risk analysts have estimated Wilma's damage in Florida at up to $10 billion (€8.3 billion), which would rank it among the top 10 most expensive storms to hit the United States.
A queue stretching for hundreds of metres formed at a downtown Miami service station that had petrol on Tuesday but was closed yesterday.
Similar queues formed at a handful of petrol stations, ATMs, grocery stores and shops that showed any signs of opening.
Federal relief agencies distributed ice and water at centres throughout the region.
South Florida had plenty of fuel, but little electricity to pump it from the ground.
Florida Power & Light, the local power company, said it could take three weeks or more to restore power to everyone.
"We have 2.7 million customers without power this morning," a company spokeswoman said. One customer is usually considered to represent two people.
The remnants of Wilma faded over the Atlantic after lashing the US northeast on Tuesday.
The 2005 Atlantic-Caribbean hurricane season has been a record-breaker, with 22 tropical storms or hurricanes, beating the old record of 21 set in 1933.
This year was also marked by the most intense Atlantic storms ever recorded, including Hurricane Katrina, which in August burst the levees protecting New Orleans and flooded the city. Katrina caused more than $30 billion in damage, probably the costliest natural disaster in US history.
Two days after Wilma struck, south Florida was slowly pulling itself back together. Miami International and Palm Beach International airports were open and rubbish trucks moved through the streets picking up storm debris.
Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International airport was closed to major commercial traffic, but some small aircraft were landing, a spokeswoman said. Most local governments and courts were still closed.
Residents and engineers wondered at the damage Wilma's 160km/h (100mph) winds did to windows in some of south Florida's glass towers - even those built after building codes were strengthened after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
A school board headquarters in Fort Lauderdale and hotels and banks in Miami's Brickell banking district were among the buildings whose windows were extensively damaged and showered glass on surrounding streets.
Herb Saffir, a structural engineer who helped develop the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, told the Miami Herald he was "dumbfounded" by the window damage. -