Hurricane Wilma
Tuesday 1st November 2005
In the early hours of the 24th October 2005 Florida was hit by Hurricane Wilma. Wilma had already pounded the Cancun area of Mexico for 36 hours before moving east and making landfall on the west coast of Florida. We were in Ft Lauderdale at the time staying in a friends apartment near the downtown area.
These photos were taken in the afternoon after Wilma had passed by. It was amazing how widespread he devastation was. Trees like the one above on Las Olas Blvd were blocking streets and had taken down power lines.
The downtown area was particularly hard hit. Buildings like this one, built before stricter building regulations were enacted after Hurricane Andrew, lost a lot of windows and glass covered the streets for blocks around.
Flying debris caused a lot of damage, our hire car was slightly dented by a falling branch, but other vehicles like this one suffered much more damage.
Lamp posts like this one were blown over by the wind. Along Las Olas, one of the main streets in Ft Lauderdale around 80% of lamp posts like these were down.
Hurricane Wilma caused widespread disruption of power, water and sewer systems. we were without any water for 2 days and the water was not safe to drink for 2 weeks. Approximately 6 million people were without power, it took 2 weeks for ours to come back on.
Traffic lights in the US are often hung from wires across intersections. At nearly every junction lights were scattered across the road. Out of 1350 lights in Broward county (the Ft Lauderdale area) none were working after Wilma passed, and a week later only 150 were working.
Along the beach front area sand was blown into the road, covering it, and Lifeguard towers were blown down. These photos are from the following morning when the clean up had begun. The beach area was closed down to non residents for over a week. The Ft Lauderdale boat show was delayed by a week and shortened.
There is a lot of construction along Ft Lauderdale beach at the moment. The crane in the picture below was bent by the winds and another bigger crane had to be brought in to remove it.
To find out more about Hurricane Wilma click on one of the links below.
