On Watson Island, at least five former sailboat dwellers have been living beside a closed public restroom near the marina, where they’ve endured rainstorms and robberies.
Since 1929, Sugarloaf Key’s towering bat bastion has welcomed nearly every kind of creature — except the one it was built to host. The 30-foot-tall tower was never effective at attracting bats to eat mosquitoes, as its builders had planned, but it became successful at attracting tourists and nesting ospreys.
Santiago Perez grabs for the carabiner, but it slips from his frostbitten fingers. His glove liners are worn away, so ice crystals form on his skin. Fearing he might lose digits, he tries to flex his hand inside the cavity of an unwieldy mitten, but it merely twitches. Nothing can…
The U.S. is focused this week on Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria has left a humanitarian crisis in its wake, with millions of American citizens still without water, food, and power. But Maria caused devastation across the Caribbean, including the tiny island of Dominica, a 290-square-mile nation 400 miles east of Puerto Rico. Within hours of the Category 5 storm striking, 90 percent of the island’s buildings were destroyed and, in less than a week, 27 people were killed.
A little over a week ago, Hurricane Irma, a deadly Category 4 storm, pummeled South Florida, taking down trees and flooding roads. For days, millions of residents lived without power as linemen rushed to fix lines and transformers. Despite their disability, Miami’s blind and visually impaired fared reasonably well, surviving one of the harshest, most traumatizing storms to hit Florida since Hurricane Andrew.
Two weeks ago, Irma, a catastrophic Atlantic hurricane killed 38 people and destroyed thousands of homes in the Caribbean Islands before turning its sights on South Florida. Among its most victimized was Saint Thomas, a 32-square-mile island located 110 miles east of Puerto Rico. As one of 51,000 St. Thomians, Ramseyer, a 26-year-old marine biology graduate student, endured the brunt of Irma, weathering not only her destruction but also the impending threat of another Category 5 storm, Hurricane Maria.
Since 1933, Flamingo Gardens in Davie has been home to South Florida’s tallest tree — the Terminalia superba, otherwise known as the korina tree. Throughout the tree’s lifetime, it has survived bolts of lightning, gunshot wounds, and even the wrath of Hurricane Wilma. Alas, the hearty behemoth was no match for Irma, a Category 4 storm that tore up South Florida September 10.
Seven days after Irma, tens of thousands of homes in South Florida still have no electricity, even though FPL promised all power would be restored by this past weekend. Residents in many low-income communities, such as Allapattah, Little Haiti, Overtown, and Opa-locka, say they’ve had it the worst since FPL shut off power two days before Irma even arrived.
A group of young sailors stands helplessly on a deck as two skippers in yellow tow a shredded 200-foot-long dock away from the shore. Crushed behind it is a mangled wreck of nine sailboats, a couple of powerboats, and a 40-foot pontoon. As the dock drifts away, their worst fear is confirmed: Nothing is salvageable.
Every year, more than a half million people flock to the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens and the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. Hurricane Irma, though, severely damaged both Vizcaya — an early 20th century Italian-style estate built by James Deering — and Fairchild, one of the world’s greatest repositories of tropical…
Hurricane Irma tore through Jungle Island with 100 mph gusts and massive rain, ripping apart trees and blocking pathways through the park. But Christopher Gould, managing director of Jungle Island, insists his animal park has had reason to celebrate. All of Jungle Island’s 600 animals —which include orangutans, parrots, tigers and…
This past weekend, thousands of South Floridians sought shelter as devastating Category 5 hurricane, Irma, ravaged the western coast. However, not everyone was as lucky. At Miami Seaquarium, beloved orca Lolita was left outside as 165 mph winds and flying debris battered the state.
Hours after deadly Category 5 Hurricane Irma left South Florida, Category 2 storm Jose continues to brew in the Atlantic Ocean. Thus far, the time and place of its landfall is still uncertain.
Over the past few days, hordes of patrons have flocked to Trump’s resort in Doral to escape from the wrath of Hurricane Irma. Just this morning, the front desk announced to hopeful guests that the hotel is booked. But it doesn’t seem right for a president whose policies intend to cut disaster relief budgets to benefit from the panic of Irma.
Despite the panic of 185-mph Irma, a Category Five hurricane expected to hit South Florida, residents and businesses in the historic neighborhood Overtown seem unfazed, Having endured hurricanes Andrew and Wilma, many civilians seem prepared for whatever the storm may bring.
Last Thursday, Monroe County officially shut down the Card Sound Bridge toll booth in favor of an automated SunPass system. As the remaining five toll workers packed up for their last day, New Times visited the station to ask for some of their craziest stories of manning one of Florida’s last human-staffed toll booths.
Hollywood commissioners will vote today on whether to rename three streets that honor Confederate generals — John Hood, Robert E. Lee, and Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard. In the leadup to today’s vote, local civil rights activists said they feared that in a post-Charlottesville world, white supremacists might harass or try to hurt the people protesting for equality.
Carissa Kent was working at the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office in 2006 when she heard the news: While building a new outlet in Lake Park, Walmart had destroyed the homes of dozens of gopher tortoises, a threatened species that lives in burrows deep underground. Worst of all, the megacompany had done so legally. The State of Florida simply required Walmart to pay only $11,409 in extra costs to level the animals’ habitat.
For nearly three years, county officials and police in Miami-Dade failed to respond as a tent city of sex offenders grew along train tracks near Hialeah. The squalid camp is just the latest consequence of a 2005 county law that banned sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of any school, daycare center, or park, effectively banishing them into homelessness.
On September 7, Frank Meeink, a former skinhead leader and neo-Nazi recruiter, will “speak out against hate” at Eckerd College, sponsored by the Florida Holocaust Museum. After serving time in prison, where he befriended fellow inmates of other races, he became an activist, denouncing white supremacy and right-wing extremism. Weeks after the August 12 terror attack in Charlottesville, the reformed skinhead will comment on the escalating violence in America.
With just a few hours until the solar eclipse is underway, there’s a scramble to snag those protective glasses you’ve been hearing about for weeks. Local retailers such as Best Buy, Lowes, and Walmart are sold out, some even for all of Florida. If you’ve procrastinated, we’ve got you covered. Hurry down to these events, and you just might get lucky:
On September 7, the Miami-Dade Commission will convene to review the mayor’s proposed budget, which includes cuts to transit funding. Protesting the cuts are members of the Transit Alliance, who believe the new budget will cripple Miami’s public transit system.
