As Miami was hammered by tropical storm force winds and the occasional hurricane force gust generated by Hurricane Irma, the booms of three tower cranes in the city came down Sunday.
No injures were reported in either incident and, according to a report from the Miami Herald, all three booms stayed attached to the towers of their cranes and did not fall to the street.
Though Irma’s course shifted far enough west Saturday night that the city did not take a direct hit from the storm, Miami officials warned late last week that the 20 to 25 tower cranes on construction jobsites throughout the city would not be able to withstand the up to 185 mile per hour winds that Hurricane Irma, then a Category 5 storm, was expected to bring.
The booms of tower cranes are designed to spin in heavy winds, and can typically withstand wind speeds up to 145 mph. According to the Weather Channel, Miami had seen reports of gusts above 130 mph with several reports in the 100 mph range. (Two hours to Miami’s northwest in Naples, where Irma’s eye made a second landfall, sustained winds of 95 mph were reported with gusts up to 140+ mph.)
According to the Miami Herald report, the boom of the first crane, located at an under-construction apartment building at 300 Biscayne Blvd. in downtown, “bent and collapsed” around 10:30 a.m. Sunday. Firefighters watched the crane, whose boom “is still connected to the tower of the crane by a cable,” fall.
Irma spinning cranes pic.twitter.com/TuMrgwpSBi
— Yossi Kudan יוסי (@Yossikudan) September 10, 2017
