Even if the stadium is undamaged, Irma has already been costly to Hard Rock

Trees surrounding Hard Rock Stadium are down, but throughout the worst of it Sunday, Joe Robbie stood tall.

Throughout Hurricane Irma, Dolphins CEO Tom Garfinkel has been tweeting short videos and still photos taken by surveillance cameras around the team’s Miami Gardens stadium.

And while it’s not possible to glean what, if any, damage the facility suffered from Irma, what is visible in those images is encouraging.

Garfinkel posted a partial view of Hard Rock’s one-year-old canopy from 4:15 p.m., and the roof appeared to be intact.

On the ground, there was real damage to the trees that surround Joe Robbie Plaza on the stadium’s north side.

But the Robbie statue was unfazed by the gusts that neared 100 miles per hour in South Florida.

The Dolphins invested a sizable amount of money in beautifying the exterior of Hard Rock with landscaping. The images from Garfinkel show that many of those trees did not survive the storm.

A full assessment of damage to Hard Rock and the team’s Davie training complex will be done in the coming days, if not hours, but the stadium was designed to withstand Category 4 winds. Irma’s impact in Miami-Dade County was not nearly that strong.

A bigger issue could be power. There were widespread outages throughout the area, and if it is not restored in Davie by the time the Dolphins play the Chargers next Sunday, it could impact the team’s plans for the following week.

This story was originally published September 10, 2017 at 5:18 PM with the headline "Even if the stadium is undamaged, Irma has already been costly to Hard Rock."