Hurricane Frances slams ashore in Florida

Hurricane Frances roared into eastern Florida late on Saturday with stinging rains and fierce winds that ripped away roofs, trees and boat moorings and cut power to 1.3 million homes and businesses.

The massive storm crept over Florida's Atlantic coast, where 2.5 million people had been told to flee inland.

Florida evacuees waited nervously while the storm stalled for two days over the Bahamas. Then on Saturday, Frances hammered Florida's Atlantic coast with 160-kph wind gusts and promised to dump torrential rain on the peninsula for up to 15 hours in what emergency officials said could be a "marathon" of anxiety and devastation.

In Florida's central Atlantic coast counties, blinding rain squalls drove clouds of sand into the air while huge white-caps thundered onto the beaches.

Palm trees rained coconuts and then toppled over as the eye wall, the most powerful area of the storm bordering the calm eye, moved ashore.

In hard-hit Palm Beach County, boats broke from their moorings and were dragged by the wind until they snagged on bridges or other obstacles. Power lines snapped and sparked while lightning illuminated blacked-out beach towns and flood waters submerged cars in low-lying parking garages.

The Texas-sized storm covered much of the state as its huge eye began to cross the coastline late on Saturday, promising a pause in the assault. Forecasters said the eye could take 12 hours to pass, and warned people not to take false comfort in the respite as the brutal second half of the storm approached.