Construction Crane Accident Leaves West Miami Residents Without Power
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – An incident with a construction crane could be impacting residents of West Miami.
Early Thursday evening the crane went out of control and began rotating freely. That's when heavy steel cables from the crane wrapped around power lines, causing sparks to fly and shorting out the electrical system.
This is on 8th Street at Southwest 63rd Avenue.
"It is very dangerous," said Mildred Gonzalez. "There were people walking, cars on the street. They had to close the street."
We are currently on scene at SW 63rd Ave & SW 8th Street reference a request made by West Miami Police to assist in blocking off traffic due to a crane colliding with a power line. Road Closures are from SW 62 AVE to SW 64 AVE on SW 8th ST. Please avoid the area. pic.twitter.com/wXZ3tTYw24
— Miami PD (@MiamiPD) November 1, 2018
Fortunately there were no injuries and the crane operator is fine.
City of Miami Police is there assisting West Miami Police.
8th Street was closed for a few blocks for most of the evening but reopened just before 11 p.m.
It appears for now that nobody has been injured.
Chopper4 was over the scene where the crane and a power line were stick over the middle of the road.
According to FPL, police cannot move the crane until safety engineers say it's safe to do so. The incident is effecting 120 customers, per FPL.
That includes a high-rise condo on the north side of Southwest 8th Street.
Crews from FPL were on scene and began to restore power, but the issue continued to be the crane and the cables tangled in the power lines.
The crane was inoperative due to a system failure.
"We are just waiting for representatives of the crane company to come to be able to retract that cable so we can open the street up for traffic," said West Miami Police Chief Nelson Andreu.