PENSACOLA, United States (AFP) - US authorities launched a huge relief operation as Hurricane Ivan extended its trail of destruction across southern states, leaving at least 29 dead.
Thousands more homes were destroyed by the third major hurricane to hit the southern United States in six weeks and more than 1.5 million homes were without power, according to officials.
Curfews were ordered in the worst hit areas and thousands of National Guard and other security forces were sent to help with the rescue operation and to prevent looting, authorities said.
A 12-foot (four metre) long alligator missing from an Alabama zoo caused a scare in the town of Gulf Shores near where the storm hit the US coast.
President George W. Bush, who has declared Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana disaster areas, will skip weekend campaign events to observe disaster relief efforts in Alabama and Florida.
Ivan crashed into the Gulf coast early Thursday with winds of up to 135 miles (215 kilometers) an hour and torrential rains that wrecked houses and buildings and caused widespread flooding.
The storm had already taken a destructive path across the Caribbean where it killed at least 70 people.
Ivan whipped up tornadoes which caused widespread damage with the Florida city of Pensacola the worst hit. Hundreds of homes were destroyed and hundreds more had their roofs torn off.
Two thousand national guard were heading for Pensacola alone.
Many victims of Hurricane Ivan could do little more than weep, unable to believe the devastation as they returned to their wrecked homes and businesses.
"I spent the whole night crying," said Charles Fairchild, who sat on the ground beside his accounting business in Pensacola business, sorting through sodden papers he rescued from the flooded roofless building. Strewn among the rubble were a few plastic toys he kept to hand out to the children of clients, and damp photographs of his own grandchildren.
In Pensacola, many were left wondering how they would cope with the devastation to their homes and lives.
Blaise Adams, 45, wondered what would happen to his job now that the bank he worked at lost its facade. But he was resigned to his fate. "You can replace buildings, but not lives," he said.
Authorities said the storm killed at least 13 people in northwest Florida, the so-called Florida Panhandle, including four who died when a tornado ripped into a mobile home park in Blountstown, northeast of Panama City.
Six of the 13 were in the Pensacola region, worst hit by the storm which hit early Thursday.
Louisiana reported four hurricane-related deaths, Mississippi two, Georgia three and Alabama one, reports said. Six more people were killed in North Carolina in accidents such as falling trees as Ivan moved north, state emergency officials said.
Florida Governor Jeb Bush said he expects the death toll to increase.
More than 1.5 million homes and businesses lost power: at least 975,000 in Alabama, 50,000 in Louisiana, 145,000 in Mississippi and 345,000 in the Florida Panhandle.
Florida workers were still trying to restore power to about 160,000 hit by Hurricanes Charley and Frances in mid-August and early September.
Insurance experts have estimated the cost at between two billion and seven billion dollars.
Ivan was one of the 16 most powerful storms to hit the United States since 1900. And with the hurricane season in full swing, Americans were keeping an anxious watch on Hurricane Jeanne as it battered Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, possibly on its way to the US coast.
Jeanne hammered the Caribbean, killing two people in Puerto Rico and causing widespread damage and flooding as it hurtled west to pound the Dominican Republic, where another four people were killed, authorities said.
At 1800 GMT Jeanne`s center was just north of the coast of Hispaniola near the Dominican Republic-Haiti border some 95 miles (150 km) south-southwest of Grand Turk Island, the US National Hurricane Center in Miami said. Jeanne was moving west-northwest near 8 mph (13 km/hr) packing 50 mph (80 km/hr) "but could strengthen again over water during the next day," the center said.
Meanwhile Trinidad and Tobago`s government approved some five million dollars in emergency aid for victims of Hurricane Ivan in the Caribbean, Housing Minister Keith Rowley said.