A crane atop a high-rise building under construction collapsed Sunday in downtown Miami amid strong winds from Hurricane Irma — the first known crash of the two dozen such heavyweight hazards looming over the city skyline as the monster storm powers across the state.
The crane collapsed in a bayfront area filled with hotels and high-rise condo and office buildings, near AmericanAirlines Arena, according to a tweet from the city of Miami.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the collapse caused damage or injuries.
A construction crane tower collapsed in Downtown Miami on September 10 due to the power of Hurricane Irma
There are two dozen such cranes looming over the high-rise city. No other cranes have collapsed yet
Emergency personnel were unable to respond because of high winds, Miami-Dade County Director of Communications Mike Hernandez said.
Though Miami is far from Irma’s landfall in the Florida Keys, winds from the 400-mile-wide storm were blasting through the metro area. The city was under a tornado watch Sunday.
Officials urged people in buildings facing the crane to seek shelter on the opposite side of the building or in a stairwell.
“AVOID THE AREA!!” the city’s tweet said.
Two dozen tower cranes working on construction sites throughout the city were a concern ahead of Irma.
Moving the massive equipment, weighing up to 30,000 pounds, is a slow process that would have taken about two weeks, according to city officials.
Hurricane Irma made landfall on Florida this morning it the eye of the storm hit Key West at around 9.10am, bringing it with sustained winds of 130mph, as well as rain and threats of tornadoes in what is expected to be one of the worst storms to hit the area in living memory.
The state thought it had escaped the worst case scenario earlier in the weekend as the storm was downgraded to Category 3 – but late Saturday night it re-energized and was upgraded back to Category 4, the second-worst level, with gusts of up to 144mph.
Now downtown Miami is flooded and the Keys have been slammed hard. And this is only the beginning for the US, as Irma is set to move northwest, threatening Naples and other cities up the west coast of Florida as the wears on.
‘Pray, pray for everybody in Florida,’ Governor Rick Scott said on Fox News Sunday.
The Freedom Tower, a US National Historic Landmark, is pictured in the foreground while in the background is the collapsed crane
The crane collapsed in an area with many high-rise hotels, condominiums and office buildings near the American Airlines arena
Hurricane Irma is currently battering Florida. It first hit Key West and continued up the Florida Keys to Miami. It is expected to veer north and westward, hitting both the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts of the Sunshine State
A man was killed after tropical-storm-strength winds caused him to lose control of the truck he was driving through Monroe County, which contains Key West. He had been carrying a generator, local officials told ABC News.
Two others died in a car accident in Hardee County, Florida, the Florida Highway Patrol said. The area is around 60 miles inland from Sarasota.
And an elderly man died of natural causes while sheltering in a school in the city of Marathon on the Keys, Larry Kahn, an editor for FlKeysNews.com, said.
‘He was staying in one of the classrooms,’ Khan explained. ‘Police came up, along with a couple of nurses who are here, actually, got everyone out of the room and sealed it off.’
Those deaths come after Irma claimed at least 25 lives in the Caribbean as it swept over several countries, destroying entire islands.
Meanwhile, more than a million people have been left without power across the state, while storm surges of 10-15 feet have been predicted around the Everglades, where lower land exacerbates the floods.
At least four people have died in Florida due to Hurricane Irma’s destruction. The storm hit the Sunshine State early Sunday morning
Hurricane Irma has claimed at least 25 lives across the Caribbean so far. The island of Barbuda was almost entirely decimated