West Miami-Dade residents clean up after strong winds knock out power
MIAMI - Residents in the Fountainbleau community near Westchester cleaned up debris Wednesday after strong winds on Tuesday night uprooted trees, knocked down utility poles and damaged fences.
The sudden strike of those winds left dozens of homeowners without power on Wednesday despite the efforts of FPL crews that responded to the area near S.W. 4th St. and 81st Ave.
Dramatic cell phone video obtained by CBS4's Peter D'Oench shows what happened at 6:06 p.m. on Tuesday when debris carried by strong winds flew in to a transformer, causing it to explode as power was knocked out.
"Oh My God," one neighbor could be heard saying as the cell phone captured the images.
One neighbor, Roberto Hernandez, said "We don't know where it came from but suddenly power was knocked out. Last night we did not sleep. We still do n to have power."
Another neighbor named Victor said, "It was pretty rough. I saw a lot of sparks. It was a scary situation and all that. Now we have to wait for FPL crews. I was talking to one of them. They worked hard through the night. With the wind and all that, the pole came down. I have complained before about the pole because it was rotted out."
Another neighbor, Marta C. Lopez-Gray, said "We had forced winds that you could hear making a wisp-like sound. There was a lot of rain in a split second. We heard a huge boom like a train. A piece of aluminum hit the transformer and it exploded. It was pretty devastating. It was very unexpected."
Another neighbor, Nataly Jadon, said "It was loud and scary. Things were flying around the power goes off."
A spokeswoman for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue told D'Oench there were 28 reports of minor damage around the county and 20 reports of minor flooding, which CBS4 saw at the Holiday Acres Mobile Home Park in Hialeah.
In Coral Gables, police directed vehicles at one intersection as a traffic signal was knocked out by the storm.
A spokesman for Miami Fire Rescue told CBS 4 there were no major problems from the storm.
Ralph Casals, the Town Manager for Cutler Bay there was storm-related flooding in early June in Saga Bay, said "All is good. The drawing down of the canals by the South Florida Water Management District helped tremendously. Just a couple of trees down, nothing major."