Barry’s Downpour Helps and Hurts
By Elizabeth Baier, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Jun. 3–Tropical Storm Barry dumped much-needed rain on wide swaths of Florida on Saturday, alleviating some of the arid conditions that had fueled wildfires around the state and drained Lake Okeechobee.
Barry weakened into a tropical depression as it moved through Tampa Bay on Saturday.
But the storm, which formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, the first day of the 2007 hurricane season, was not wholly benevolent. It knocked out power to thousands of South Florida homes, apparently opened up a hole on busy Interstate 95 in Palm Beach County, and was probably to blame for the gusts of wind that sent a section of a crane crashing into the roof of a synagogue in Fort Lauderdale.
Barry made landfall in the Tampa Bay area around 10 a.m., according to meteorologist Dan Gregoria of the National Weather Service, then continued on a northeasterly track across the state. It drenched South Florida, dumping 6.83 inches of rain at the Palm Beach International Airport.
“Any rain that we get at this point is very welcome,” said Julie Huber, spokeswoman for the South Florida Water Management District. “Some parts of the district received as much as 8 inches.”
The state Division of Forestry said the rain was a blessing, but not enough to quench either the wildfires already burning or the threat of more.
“It’s going to take a whole lot rain to get them completely out,” said Division of Forestry spokesman Daniel Stanley in Tallahassee. “We’re still at a pretty significant danger for wildfires. We need three or four more times of it to be completely out of the woods.”
Heavy rain overnight eroded a section of I-95 in Palm Beach County, creating a 12-by-2-foot hole north of 10th Avenue North in Lake Worth. Florida Highway Patrol troopers said more than 50 cars were damaged by driving over the hole. Twenty of the vehicles had to be towed.
FHP closed the northbound lanes of I-95 at about 5:30 a.m. after crews had tried unsuccessfully to repair the shallow hole. It was later fixed and the highway reopened around 2:30 p.m.
Water levels in Lake Okeechobee actually dropped between Thursday and Saturday, said Huber of the water management district. The reading as of 6:30 a.m. Saturday was about 8.9 feet above sea level — below the 8.94 feet registered Thursday. But water district managers said Barry’s welcome contribution to refilling the lake should begin to be felt soon.
“It may take a few days for the rain to drain into the lake,” Huber said. “It should come up a bit tomorrow.”
In Fort Lauderdale, police said high winds toppled a 300-foot crane early Saturday, sending its arm onto a building at the Chabad Lubavitch of Fort Lauderdale. The synagogue’s Mikvah, or ritual cleansing area, was damaged and will have to be rebuilt. No one was hurt, police said.
Barry also plunged thousands of people in the region into the dark, at least temporarily. Crews with Florida Power & Light Co. spent much of Saturday restoring power to several pockets of South Florida that lost power Friday night.
In Delray Beach, Barry knocked down power lines and caused several car accidents on I-95 and in the city. Delray Beach Fire-Rescue Battalion Chief Russ Accardi said power was lost from 6:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. Saturday on Lake Ida Road between Barwick Road to Congress Avenue.
As of 9 p.m., 241 customers are still without power in Palm Beach County, FPL said. By Sunday morning, they should all be restored. Earlier Saturday, 2,287 customers in Palm Beach County customers were without electricity, according to Michael Williams, an FPL spokesman. “This is very, very minimal,” Williams said. “We’ve had crews out all day, as they would be anyway in a situation like this.”
Staff Writers Jerome Burdi, Brian Haas and Maria Herrera, and The Associated Press, contributed to this report.
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