It could be a major safety hazard, windmills near the 1-10 in North Palm Springs crashing down to the ground. It happened yesterday, and now there's an investigation as to why the wind turbine, nearly 200 feet fell.

"It went into overspeed, some sort of maintainence or some sort of malfunction," said Jeff Welton of the Palm Springs based Wintec Energy.

Welton says it's a problem that happens from time to time, but he's particularly worried about a group of 15 older windmills which sits on Wintec land, but belongs to Florida based NextEra Energy Resources. The windmills are over 1,000 feet from the freeway, so they don't pose a threat to traffic, but Welton says he's concerned about the safety of employees working on the turbines. "If a turbine fell, it's just like a car accident, you're going to get killed."

In a statement to KPSP Local 2, NextEra Energy Resources said, "Nothing is more important than the safe and reliable operation of our wind turbines. We operate over 8,000 wind turbines in the U.S. and Canada and our safety and operational record is outstanding. We are currently investigating the recent failure of one of our wind turbines to determine the cause. These turbines are on private property with private access. At no time was the public or our employees safety in question."

The City of Palm Springs says it's looking into the performance of several windmills in that area and will investigate to see whether there should be any cause for concern, or whether repairs or removal might be needed. At this point, the City says no code enforcement citations have been issued.