ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – The National Weather Service says it has received reports of multiple collapsed cranes due to high winds in St. Petersburg, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Siesta Key, where Milton made landfall.
St. Petersburg Fire Rescue confirmed one collapse late Wednesday about six blocks from the city’s pier. There were no reports of injuries.
The crane was at the site of a 515-foot-tall (157-meter-tall) luxury high-rise building under construction that is being billed as one of the tallest buildings on the west coast of Florida. It was scheduled to be completed in summer 2025.
More than 2 million Florida residents are without power
Over 2 million customers lost power as Hurricane Milton cut a path through central Florida late Wednesday, according to the website PowerOutages.us.
Energy companies serve more than 11.5 million customer accounts statewide, according to the website. The number of people left without electricity continued to grow as hurricane-spawned tornados, sustained tropical winds and flooding inundated the region.
Nearly 100% of customers in Hardee County were without power, and people in Sarasota, Manatee and Pinella counties were also hit hard by outages.
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