1 unit extensively burned, others damaged by apartment fire

LAUDERHILL – One unit was extensively burned and nearly a dozen others were damaged by smoke and water when fire broke out Tuesday at a 10 story apartment complex in Lauderhill.

The fire started in a sixth floor unit at 1464 Inverrary Drive at The Manors of Inverrary complex. No one was inside the apartment at the time.

Tiffany St. Hilaire, 34, heard a fire alarm go off about 10 a.m. and rushed out to her balcony and smelled smoke.

“I called 911 and I went out in the hallway and I saw so much smoke and water,” Hilaire said.

Lauderhill Fire Capt. Jerry Gonzalez said it took 50 to 60 firefighters from his agency, Tamarac and Sunrise about 25 minutes to get the fire under control and 45 minutes to extinguish everything.

“These buildings have enclosed hallways so if there’s a fire in one apartment the halls fill with smoke very quickly,” he said.

Initial reports of people being trapped may have been because some residents were standing on their balconies when firefighters and rescue crews began arriving.

“You want to keep everyone in place and not take anybody out into those hallways because it could be deadly. You don’t evacuate unless there are flames coming into the apartment,” Gonzalez said.

There were no serious injuries reported. One resident was treated at the scene for chest pains and a firefighter was treated for heat-related symptoms, Gonzalez said.

The building doesn’t have sprinklers, Gonzalez said, and the cause of the fire remains under investigation.

North Miami Beach – A crane that was being used to repair a seawall along the Intracoastal Waterway collapsed and smashed into the roof of a South Florida condominium.

It happened Sunday night at the four-story complex near the 3700 block of Northeast 170th Street in North Miami Beach.

No one was hurt, but condo resident Antonio Abreau told WFOR-Ch. 4. he thought the world was falling in on him.

“Massive, I thought it was a plane crash,” he told the station. “I saw big pieces falling out of the roof.”

Aerial views from TV news helicopters showed the crane resting against and through part of the roof of the condominium complex.

Efrain Daleccio, a safety director with Shoreline Foundation, which is in charge of the project, told WSVN-Ch. 7 that a barge which held the crane shifted and then the crane tipped.

“Those barges are composed of different cavities. If one of them is full of water, it’s like a chain,” said Daleccio. “We have to make sure that when we remove the crane, it’s done in the safest way. Our first effort is [to] release the building. We are planning to remove the boom of the crane.”

Residents were evacuated from the building Sunday night. Coast Guard officials were also on the scene investigating the incident and to use booms to collect any leaking fuel or other substances.

Daleccio told WPLGCh. 10 that it may take days to remove the crane.

Hollywood Commissioner Caryl Shuham is hoping to avoid a legal fight. There was some support among county commissioners Tuesday to switch to the Circ site, if the city were to pick up any extra costs that would be created, but it’s still not clear just how much more expensive that would be.

Shuham doesn’t think the county will start operating the system with only 15 of the 16 antenna sites.

“They seem open to having the city come back to them with a proposal on how to proceed at the Circ. That’s what I’m hearing,” Shuham said. “I think, in the next few days, I’m hopeful that the city attorney and the county attorney can sit down and come up with a resolution to put this antenna on the Circ, where it belongs.”

The county has been under pressure to fix its unreliable radio system after it crippled the police response to mass shootings at Fort Lauderdale’s airport in 2017 and at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in 2018. Some police had to resort to hand signals to communicate with each other.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who heads the state commission that has been investigating the Parkland shooting, found it “mind boggling” that yet another roadblock has surfaced in the county’s efforts to get the new system up and running.

“It’s so vitally important. It was supposed to be completed by the end of 2019, here we are sitting in September of 2019, and it couldn’t be further away,” Gualtieri said when contacted by phone. “The grave concern is for officer safety and public safety.”