NAPLES, Florida: Hurricane Wilma furiously cut across Florida yesterday, killing one person and leaving more than three million homes without power after churning huge waves that flooded Cuba's capital Havana.

The storm killed at least 10 people in its violent passage through Mexico's Yucatan peninsula over the weekend, where tens of thousands of American and European tourists were forced to flee resorts or hide in shelters.

In Florida, police said a man was killed after being pinned by a falling tree north of Miami.

In Cuba, four people, including three foreign tourists, were killed in a bus accident as they evacuated Friday before the storm slammed the island.

Wilma slashed across Florida as a Category Two storm in the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale before regaining strength just off the Atlantic coast, where it grew into a Category Three hurricane, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC).

A hurricane warning remained in effect for parts of the state's east coast. The storm was moving northeast, blowing winds of 185kph, according to the NHC's 1830 GMT advisory.

Governor Jeb Bush urged residents who missed the chance to flee to ride out the raging storm indoors.

"Please hunker down," he said at a press conference. "Just stay in your homes until the storm has passed."

"Please, please don't go back until the local emergency managers tell you it's safe to go back," Paulison said in a news conference.

But many had ignored the evacuation calls in the southwest city of Naples and in the Florida Keys island chain south of Florida.

"If you did not evacuate, stay inside until everything is safe. Make sure the winds die down because we get more injuries after the storm than during the storm," Paulison said. "We want you to just be careful."

Jeb Bush's brother, President George W Bush, declared a major disaster in Florida, releasing federal funds to supplement state and local recovery efforts, and that emergency aid had been deployed.

"We have prepositioned food, medicine, communications equipment, urban search and rescue teams," Bush said after a meeting of his cabinet.

Bush was keen to show the government was well-prepared for the disaster after his administration was heavily criticised for its slow response to Hurricane Katrina, which claimed more than 1,200 lives after it struck the southern US coast on August 29.

The Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, where the space shuttle is launched, shut down and told employees to stay home yesterday.

The storm's winds took down trees and street signs and broke store windows in glitzy Miami Beach.

South of the Florida Keys in Cuba, Havana residents woke up to inundated streets as sea water was washed into parts of the city. Western regions of the Caribbean island also suffered serious flooding, with some residents saying it was the worst storm to hit the island in 12 years.

"I'm terrified, this was apocalyptic and the worst is yet to come," said Olga Salinas, 58, trapped on the second floor of her house in the flooded Miramar district of Havana.

In Mexico, the death toll rose to 10 after Wilma slammed the touristic Yucatan peninsula.

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