Construction cranes in the city of Miami aren’t designed to withstand Hurricane Irma’s Category 5 winds, putting a number of residents at risk.
The 20 to 25 cranes in the city, which includes Brickell and downtown Miami, can handle winds of up to 145 miles per hour, the city said on Tuesday. Irma clocked winds of 185 miles an hour on Tuesday, the second strongest storm in the Atlantic Ocean following Hurricane Allen in 1980.
Maurice Pons, the city’s deputy director of the building department, advised against staying in a high-rise next to a construction site. Neighborhoods impacted could also include Midtown Miami, Edgewater and the Arts & Entertainment District.
Those sites are now on lockdown as crews work to clean up and secure project sites. In Miami, that includes Panorama Tower, One Thousand Museum, the Paraiso District, and Echo Brickell, where a scaffolding collapse left five injured and one dead about a year ago. – Katherine Kallergis