Transcript for 2nd crane collapses in Miami because of Hurricane Irma

so much. We'll go check in now with glena pillbur milberg, she's out on streets in Miami. Describe what you're seeing. Are people off the streets, heeding the warnings to stay inside? Glena, can you hear us? You really -- I just got a jerk in my shot, sorry. That's okay. It happens on live television. Where are you and what are you seeing? Hi. We're at Miami beach, wind, water, you just let me know -- You've got Elizabeth and Dan here from ABC up in New York. Just wondering if you can give us a sense of what you're seeing down on street level there. Hi, Dan, hi, Elizabeth. Well, let me just tell you that wind and water are the two things that Miami beach really worries about all the time. And what hurricane Irma is doing as we speak right now is a little of both. So let me show you Collins avenue, for people familiar with Miami beach, we're just north of the fountain blue hotel. It is a quasi residential and hotel area. And the visuals of what Irma is bringing windwise is really in the palm trees, in the wind and water and we have right about a block to the east of us we have the beach. And this is sort of a wind tunnel just taking Irma's winds so strongly, tearing down things in its path. So all of the roads in Miami beach at the moment have downed power lines and fallen trees and impediments and is so dangerous to drive through. Miami beach has been a mandatory evacuation for about three days. You see that there are people O chose to ignore that. But the vast majority of residents have evacuated the beach. And so emergency officials when they do come out of their emergency operations office, they feel it is safe enough to, we'll have fairly empty roads to be able to clear. The other thing I wanted to talk about was the water. Water on Miami beach, right now, we are at high tide, so the water is actually three feet higher than Normal just at base level without all of this rain coming down. I want to show you this garage underneath and what is -- there is about a foot of water in the garage, many condominiums in this city have evacuated their garages. But what is really noticeable is this drain right here, doing absolutely nothing. The ground is so saturated that the water keeps coming. So when you see -- when you see this rain that keeps coming, know that in the next few hours, the roads are going to be flooded, we are a barrier island, a man made barrier island between the atlantic ocean and biscayne bay and this -- the water is just -- makes this whole city really difficult. One more thing, if you have some time, I can show you, right down here, an example of a construction site, you can see how the banners are flying so that's the most visual part. But easily not the most dangerous part, of course. In the city of Miami, not far from where we are, two construction cranes have collapsed. There are construction sites with materials all over the city. Miami has been built up, especially since hurricane Andrew, 25 years ago, so many more buildings, so many people and when you get a storm like this, it really lays bare how dangerous this kind of population and such a really fragile environment what can happen. I'm curious as you walk around, you showed us the underground parking garage, which was flooded, the streets where you are in Miami beach don't seem to be quite as flooded as the streets that we're seeing in Miami proper. Do you have any idea why? I do. Miami beach, a lot of Miami beach is undergoing half a billion dollar project to pump water out. That was largely put in place in front of sea level rise, which is such an important issue in this town. Miami, the city of Miami has not done that yet. That's one part. The city of Miami where you see the worst flooding is a very densely populated inner city area, much like -- if I can compare it to New York City, a small part of Miami has very big buildings, very dense and it is right on the water. And Miami is just so geographically low to the ground, at sea level, built on limestone, it is re good drainage, but not when you're inundated all at once. So between the ground water coming up, and the hurricane bringing in the sea, that just -- there is nowhere for the water to go, but up. All right. And just before we let Hadder go, sorry about that -- There are places on Miami beach whichare flooded too. It is hard to hear. The wind is so surreal, it sounds like a train. Yeah, it is funny, we keep hearing that about the eerie audio component of this storm. Freight train. Freight train or the whistling. Let me ask you, you talked a while ago about the two cranes, construction cranes that have collapsed. Miami as you know, you're in the middle of a construction boom, there are cranes all around town. Officialed assured us it would be safe for the cranes to spin. You were no longer in the direct path of the storm. And yet you have two cranes that have collapsed thus far. What's going on? Yeah. And that's raising a lot of questions. Right before the storm hit, and in fact when we didn't know where it would go, and southeast Florida was bracing for a direct hit, we did a lot of interviewing with some of the construction companies. I got a primer on the three types of construction trains. The tower cranes, the ones you see, the tall ones they don't take down. One of the construction company vice presidents was saying these are like weather vanes, lattice works, the wind wloes throu sblows through them, they spin and everything will be fine. They also say this can withstand up to 145-mile-an-hour winds. Clearly the Irma we were expecting before yesterday was going to be winds much stronger than that. So that was a question. The one I don't know about, the second crane that collapsed from my vantage point, I know about the first one, that was a tower crane. And that was according to these construction officials supposed to be the kind of construction crane that would have withstood the winds that we are getting at least up until now. That clearly did not happen. I'll say they will have a lot of explaining to do in the coming weeks. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much. We'll check back in with you as the day progresses.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.