WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Floridians battered by Hurricane Frances emerged from shuttered homes and shelters Monday to face ruined houses, felled trees and lines the length of two football fields for suddenly precious ice, batteries and gasoline.
Weakened to a tropical storm but still blowing winds of 65 mph, Frances made its second landfall Monday afternoon south of Tallahassee. It dumped as much as 10 inches of rain and knocked out power in the state's Panhandle before winds dropped to 35 mph. Frances is headed to Georgia and Alabama.
The storm swamped the downstate peninsula over the weekend with as much as 13 inches of rain before passing over the Gulf of Mexico and aiming for the Panhandle.
Frances left damage "in the couple of billions of dollars," according to an early estimate from state Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher. Last month, Hurricane Charley ravaged the southwestern coast and destroyed or damaged more than 30,000 homes; insured losses were estimated at $7.4 billion.
"There's some individual home damage, but not a lot of total wipeout" compared with Charley, said Gallagher, who toured stricken areas Monday.
The state's tourism industry also took a hit. Frances disrupted the typically busy Labor Day weekend, as theme parks, restaurants, souvenir shops and convention centers shut down.
But as power came back on in some communities, restaurants, grocery stores and other businesses along the Atlantic coast began to open their doors.
Airports in Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, St. Lucie, Vero Beach, Tampa and Orlando reopened.
At Cape Canaveral, 85 miles north of Sewall's Point, where the hurricane came ashore early Sunday, heavy winds dislodged more than 1,000 panels from a building where spacecraft are assembled at the Kennedy Space Center. Officials said the damage could delay plans to resume shuttle launches next spring.
The storm killed nine people as it rampaged through the Bahamas and Florida, including the son-in-law and grandson of Florida State University football coach Bobby Bowden. The two were killed when their car skidded on Interstate 10 in Alachua County, in northern Florida, and struck a utility truck coming from Texas to help restore power.
Frances struck while Florida was recovering from Charley, a smaller but more powerful storm that killed 27 people last month.
