Miami Beach Mayor: City Dodged 'Cannon' Not Bullet

MIAMI BEACH, FL —Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine has had a difficult week, to say the least. First he oversaw the evacuation of all 90,000 residents in his city ahead of Hurricane Irma, and then he had to share some hard facts to actually convince them to leave. Now that Irma has passed, Levine finds himself as the pitchman in chief to jump-start the city’s smarting tourism industry thanks to the 24-hour news cycle — all in the space of a week.

“We didn’t dodge a bullet. We dodged a cannon,” he acknowledged in an interview with Patch at the iconic Eden Roc Hotel Tuesday night.

While Levine didn’t share the exact percentage of homes that still lack power, he described the damage to his city as minimal. In a separate Patch interview, Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado estimated that as much as 70 percent of his nearby city was without power. (For more information about the recovery from Hurricane Irma, subscribe for free to the Miami Patch and receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts. If you're outside of Miami, find your local Florida Patch. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Watch: Time-Lapse Captures Irma's Fury On Miami Beach

“The good news is the damage in Miami Beach is quite minimal,” Levine asserted. “Besides trees and power lines — and maybe some broken windows and flooding in certain houses — it’s minimal. I think the focus truly should be on the damage that’s happening in the Keys and the damage that’s happening in Jacksonville. We are the fortunate ones.”

If anything, he said, the damage to his city will be measured in downtime — putting up shutters, taking them down, having to incur unexpected lodging costs for residents and then cleaning up after the storm.

“I think there will be the lost opportunity costs and I think it will be the damage to our residents — their livelihoods, any damage to their homes and of course to their lives,” Levine stressed. “But we’re getting back as soon as the power is restored fully. I think that Miami Beach is going to be 100 percent on target."

Levine predicted that all of the major oceanfront hotels will be fully operational by the end of the week, including the Eden Roc, which he toured with General Manager Laurence Dubey before heading to other nearby hotels.

Of course Miami Beach has faced bigger challenges over the years — most recently Zika, a flood this summer and even during World War II when the then-Army Air Corps commandeered oceanfront hotels to train for the invasion of Normandy.

To a large extent, Levine is counting that Florida Power & Light will get his city up and running as quickly as possible. That's difficult, particularly considering there are much harder hit areas in Florida — in the Florida Keys, Jacksonville and elsewhere.

“Thank God we are having this conversation and it’s just about power,” he emphasized. “We’re doing everything in our power to push, cajole and get FPL to work as fast as possible, but I can tell you FPL has really been doing everything it can.”

The mayor acknowledged that Florida Power & Light crews operate on a priority system.

“They first attend to critical areas, which are going to be hospitals and government buildings that deliver services,” according to Levine. “Then they go right to schools, then multi-family buildings, then single family homes.”

One thing the city can control is the evacuation of its residents.

Miami Beach began allowing residents to return to the city on Tuesday, a process that the mayor described as “smooth” and “flawless" thus far.

“Folks were patient. What we’re trying to reinforce to them is that a lot of our traffic lights are out, so we need to make sure that they watch for stop signs,” Levine said.

“I think everyone’s come together. They understand this is a tragedy that affects everybody and that there are those that are in a much worse position than the folks in Miami and Miami beach.”

Photo by Paul Scicchitano