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The most ferocious hurricane to hit Bermuda in recent decades slammed into the islands yesterday, ripping off roofs, tearing up trees and sinking boats with winds gusting up to 150 mph.

A sailboat is pounded by the waves as Hurricane Fabian hits Bermuda. The Category 3 storm had winds gusting up to 150 mph.   [Reuters]

"There seems to be an awful lot of damage," said Ian Currie of the Bermuda Weather Service in Hamilton. "We're experiencing the worst this hurricane has to offer."

Four people were reported missing and feared dead.

The eye of Hurricane Fabian passed 30 miles west of Bermuda, making the islands bear the brunt of the "eye wall," generally the most destructive part of a hurricane, Currie said.

Bermuda police service spokesman Robin Simmons said the islands were battered by the hurricane's top winds for three to four hours. By nightfall, the winds had eased as the storm pushed north, away from Bermuda.

"We've had some very big storm surges, and people in lower areas were evacuated to higher ground," Simmons said. "It seems bad, but we won't know how bad until morning."

Among the buildings damaged were the central police station, which lost much of its roof, and the weather service building, which lost its satellite dish.

Currie said he had heard reports of many roofs being blown off houses and of numerous boats sunk in the harbors. He said that the weather service's instruments for measuring the wind were lost after they recorded gusts of up to 120 mph, and that the same happened to equipment operated by harbor officials, which recorded gusts above 150 mph. There was also an unconfirmed report of a tornado sighting.

Much of Bermuda was without electricity -- except for parts of the capital, Hamilton, where power lines are underground. The storm knocked radio and television stations off the air in the early afternoon.

Many tourists were evacuated from the colony of 62,000 people before the hurricane hit, but others decided to stay in their hotels to experience the area's worst storm in 50 years. One hotel, the Fairmount Hamilton Princess, even came up with a "Fabian cocktail," with umbrellas turned inside out.

Although the storm's strength fluctuated as it neared Bermuda, Fabian was listed as a Category 3 storm on the five-point Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity when it hit the islands, 560 miles east of North Carolina.

Bermuda hasn't seen a Category 3 hurricane, capable of damaging small buildings and destroying waterfront homes, since 1953, when Hurricane Edna arrived with 115 mph winds. The last powerful hurricane to hit the British-controlled mid-Atlantic islands was Hurricane Emily in 1987, a Category 1 storm that tore off roofs, left homes without power for weeks and caused more than $50 million in damage.

Fabian was not only intense, it was also huge, with hurricane-force winds extending 115 miles from the eye.

John Harvey, chief executive of the Bermuda Hotel Association, said that about 1,000 tourists remained on the islands, but that about 3,000 left when they learned the hurricane was coming. He said there were many reports of windows being sucked out and hotels damaged, but no reports of injuries.

At its peak, Harvey said, the winds looked "like moving white lightning. . . . There was a kind of howling, and it sounded pretty spooky."

"It's terrific to watch, but it's still intimidating," Susan Chandler, 52, a tourist from Manhattan who decided to stay in Bermuda for the rest of her two-week vacation, told the Associated Press. "There's so much sea-spray in the harbor now it looks like it's snowing."

Bermuda is a relatively wealthy group of islands, and Hamilton is a small but sophisticated city with modern glass buildings as well as older island architecture.

"The island is experiencing a tremendous degree of stress, a consequence mainly because we've never had to deal with a storm of this consequence since 1963," said government spokesman John Burchall, referring to Hurricane Arlene, which struck in August 40 years ago.

Burchall said part of a wall of the Causeway, a bridge about 800 yards long that links the main island to the airport and the ancient capital of St. George's, had collapsed, closing the road. He told the AP that two police officers and two civilians were missing and were feared dead after the collapse.

The Causeway is a key link for Bermuda, an important offshore insurance center and home to the registered offices of about 12,500 international companies. Celebrities including Hollywood stars Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones have homes on the islands, as does Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The U.S. National Weather Service has predicted an above-normal hurricane season for the Atlantic in 2003, with 12 to 15 tropical storms and three or four major hurricanes.

As Fabian battered Bermuda, slow-moving Tropical Storm Henri drenched an already soaked Florida, pushing heavy rains into areas where lakes and rivers were full to overflowing, the AP reported. The storm's center was expected to make landfall early today near Crystal River, about 60 miles north of Tampa, with sustained winds of 50 mph but perhaps not much additional rain, forecasters said.

By 11 p.m. yesterday, Fabian was about 125 miles north-northwest of Bermuda.

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