The 13th Anniversary of Andrew, Cat. 5 Hurricane-Devastation to South Florida (vanity)

The most destructive United States hurricane of record started modestly as a tropical wave that emerged from the west coast of Africa on August 14. The wave spawned a tropical depression on August 16, which became Tropical Storm Andrew the next day. Further development was slow, as the west-northwestward moving Andrew encountered an unfavorable upper-level trough.

Indeed, the storm almost dissipated on August 20 due to vertical wind shear. By August 21, Andrew was midway between Bermuda and Puerto Rico and turning westward into a more favorable environment. Rapid strengthening occurred, with Andrew reaching hurricane strength on the 22nd and Category 4 status on the 23rd. After briefly weakening over the Bahamas, Andrew regained Category 4 status as it blasted its way across south Florida on August 24.

The hurricane continued westward into the Gulf of Mexico where it gradually turned northward. This motion brought Andrew to the central Louisiana coast on August 26 as a Category 3 hurricane. Andrew then turned northeastward, eventually merging with a frontal system over the Mid-Atlantic states on August 28.

Reports from private barometers helped establish that Andrew's central pressure at landfall in Homestead, Florida was 27.23 inches, which makes it the third most intense hurricane of record to hit the United States. Andrew's peak winds in south Florida were not directly measured due to destruction of the measuring instruments. An automated station at Fowey Rocks reported 142 mph sustained winds with gusts to 169 mph (measured 144 ft above the ground), and higher values may have occurred after the station was damaged and stopped reporting.

The National Hurricane Center had a peak gust of 164 mph (measured 130 ft above the ground), while a 177 mph gust was measured at a private home. Additionally, Berwick, LA reported 96 mph sustained winds with gusts to 120 mph.

Andrew produced a 17 ft storm surge near the landfall point in Florida, while storm tides of at least 8 ft inundated portions of the Louisiana coast. Andrew also produced a killer tornado in southeastern Louisiana.

Andrew is responsible for 23 deaths in the United States and three more in the Bahamas. The hurricane caused $26.5 billion in damage in the United States, of which $1 billion occurred in Louisiana and the rest in south Florida. The vast majority of the damage in Florida was due to the winds. Damage in the Bahamas was estimated at $250 million.

"1992 -- The eye of Hurricane Andrew crossed Homestead Air Force Base shortly before dawn. The 16.9 foot storm surge on the coast was a record for southeast Florida. Central pressure was 27.23". Wind gusts to 164 mph damaged over 125,000 homes."

" “Andrew was a small and ferocious hurricane that brought unprecedented economic devastation along a path through the northwestern Bahamas, the southern Florida peninsula, and south-central Louisiana. Damage in the United States is estimated to be near 25 billion, ((SINCE REVISED TO $30B), making Andrew the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history.

"The tropical cyclone struck southern Dade County, Florida, especially hard, with violent winds and storm surges characteristic of a category 4 hurricane on the Saffir/Simpson Hurricane Scale, and with a central pressure of 922 mb made it the third lowest this century for a hurricane at landfall in the United States.”

*Winds est. 140-160+ mph – after approx. a year, damage assessments and surviving instrumentation were scrutinized, it was revealed to be a Cat. 5. Note: the 177 and 187mph gusts on the area map above
*Homestead Air Force Base was said to have been built to endure 200mph winds, yet it was destroyed, including all communications and weather instrumentation

"The military suffered too. Homestead Air Force Base was wiped out by Hurricane Andrew. The three fighter squadrons normally stationed there were moved to bases in South Carolina and Georgia. During his reelection campaign, President Bush promised to rebuild and reopen Homestead AFB. After Bill Clinton's victory, the base was closed by Defense Secretary Les Aspin. The closing caused a total economic loss to the community of 430 million dollars a year.”

*160,000+ people in South Florida made homeless
*86,000 lost jobs
*Est. 30% of the population of Homestead, FL never returned after Andrew
*A reported 23-25 people died from the storm with est. 25 indirect deaths, but I will personally never believe that’s all that died. There were hundreds of undocumented aliens who worked in the farm fields, and were housed in trailer villages east of US #1 .. the area closest to the coast.

There were rumors of refrigerated trucks with bodies from friends who knew policemen, yet that was always officially denied

I hadn’t seen this before, and though it definitely conveys some theories that sound wacky to me, and there are outright lies (like what time the storm hit, for one) it does get into issue of the Hurricane Andrew deaths in detailed and graphic fashion. WOW .. this is wild .. I would love to know if any others who lived in South Dade County, FL during Andrew knew if there was any truth to these rumors about the deaths and trucks full of bodies ..definitely needs more research.

”The injuries of those who survived were mind-boggling. I had a broken jaw with eight teeth knocked out. Huge shards of glass impaled my body so deeply, they were impossible to remove without the aid of a scalpel. My head injuries were so severe that they permanently affected my eyesight.

”But I was only one amongst thousands of severely injured victims who struggled to survive the aftermath. For ten long days we were roped off from the outside world by United States military forces, leaving us stranded with no food, no water, no medical supplies, no shelter. Suffering from severe shell-shock, we waited and waited for rescue teams to arrive, but that just never happened. None of the injured in the roped-off areas was ever rescued from the devastation. It was the worst gut-wrenching betrayal I have ever experienced. I saw grown men lying on the ground in the foetal position, moaning and groaning pathetically as they tried to hug and rock themselves. My son was amongst them.

”Don't get me wrong. United States military forces were indeed present in the roped-off areas within hours of Andrew ending. But they were not there to help survivors. The National Guard along with the Coast Guard, the Army, FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), Metro Dade Police, state police and local police removed dead bodies and body parts as quickly as possible during those first ten days of the aftermath. Horrified survivors watched as both uniformed and civilian- clothed men searched the rubble and filled body bags, which they then stacked in military vehicles or huge refrigerator trucks normally used to transport food, only to drive off and leave the stranded injured to fend for themselves.”

Winds from Hurricane Andrew tipped a 30-foot (9-meter) rental truck upside-down atop a building in south Miami.

Winds at landfall 165mph gusts to 180mph,10 mile wide eye,16.9ft storm surge
Highest unofficial gust 178mph
Briefly hit winds of 170mph just east of Eleuthera island (recon)

• Free meals seved within 10 days 1.7 million
• Supplied by the military within 1 week:

98 helicopters,1,300 vehicles,1,333 tents enough to house 27,000 people,30 portable kitchens,100,000 blankets,38,500 cots
• 65 million dollars spent by red cross
• 7,000 national guard troops
• 22,000 U.S Military Troops,the largest U.S military operation ever in this country
• Many local grocers as well as fast food restaurants donated food
• Likes brothers donated 100,000 hot dogs
• Tropicana sent 3,200 cases of juice & 6 water tankers
• President Bush announces 300 million dollars of aid for Fema assistance
• Help poured in from all over the country from small towns to large corporations
• People from Broward & Palm Bch Counties convoyed help & donations to the needy.

By the time Andrew smashed into the southeast coast of Florida near 5:00 a.m. EDT, August 24, 1992, it had sustained winds of 165 mph (speed estimate was increased by NOAA in 2002 from the 1992 estimate of 145 mph) and a minimum central pressure of 922 millibars. Andrew was only the third Category 5 (sustained wind speeds greater than 155 mph) hurricane on record to strike the continental United States. The other two category 5 storms were the “Florida Keys 1935 Hurricane,” and Hurricane Camille in 1969. Moving quickly through south Florida, Andrew left a legacy of death and destruction in its wake.

Twenty-three deaths are directly attributed to the storm. More than 135,000 single family and mobile homes were destroyed or damaged, 160,000 people were left homeless and 86,000 lost their jobs. Total damage caused by Hurricane Andrew was estimated near $25 billion (1992 dollars).((LATER REVISED TO $30 BILLION)

The eye of the storm made landfall over Elliott Key, in southern Miami/Dade County. It was also a compact, fast-moving storm. According to Max Mayfield, director of NOAA’s National Hurricane Center in Miami, both were mitigating factors. “Despite the terrible loss of life and destruction, the disaster could have been worse if the eye of the hurricane made landfall 20 miles to the north. That would have been devastating for downtown Miami and we could have seen a much higher death toll. Had it been bigger and slower, with more rain, we might also have seen even more destruction.”

Leaving Florida behind, Andrew moved across the Gulf of Mexico and made a second landfall on the coast of Louisiana. An additional eight lives were lost in Louisiana, more than 21,000 homes were destroyed or damaged and the total loss there exceeded $1 billion.

An aerial photo of a mobile home community in Homestead after Hurricane Andrew (I lived on a street that had 3 mobile home communities. This could well have been my area, because this is what it looked like across the street from my area and when you walked the streets of those trailer communities. Sheet metal lay and pierced everything in sight .. it was a constant danger when salvaging. I had several run-ins, and had to go to the medical tent for a tetanus shot).

Mobile Home Pieces in Trees- Debris from a demolished mobile home park scattered through a denuded fruit orchard along Silver Palm Drive. Mobile homes are inherently fragile and unstable in high wind, no matter how well tied down. They can be deadly not only for their occupants, but for people downwind who may be hit by their remains. Mobile homes simply should not be allowed to exist near hurricane-prone stretches of coastline

Hurricane Andrew - Boat stack storage facility destroyed by wind This structure was built with steel beams Boat damage total from Andrew approached $500 million

Today is August 24, 2005, 13 years after a terrifying and mega life-altering weather event, and the closest I've ever come to death: Hurricane Andrew. Right about now, 5:30am est, the storm was still fierce, and we were experiencing heart-stopping fear. If you lived in South Florida … and especially in deep South Dade County as I did .. it was a surreal, horrifying, disorienting and devastating storm, and one in which the seconds, minutes and hours preparing for and experiencing it .. and the days, weeks, sights, stench, months and years afterward will forever be seared in your mind and your soul.

I was working in South Miami, FL and worked late that Friday night. I lived about 10 mins. from Homestead Air Force Base in a one-story, 2-bdr. townhome in the Naranja Lakes complex. and I loved it.

I stayed up late watching the tube, and didn’t arise until about 11 a.m Saturday morning. I leisurely got some breakfast, and took it and the newspaper out to my serene lakeside deck. US#1 was just across the lake, but under my huge spreading poinciana tree and with the ducks, fish and turtles, it was a little piece of heaven and so peaceful.

Around noon, I came in and turned on CNN, and there was this huge menace out in the Atlantic .. a red ball of fury looming .. and it wasn’t that far offshore. My attitude and mode changed abruptly to more anxious.

I called one of my best friends. If anyone could be said to be as tough and fearless, it’s her. She’d had a tough life, a lot of ups and downs, and worked like a dog to make a good life for herself and her daughter. She wasn't scared of anyone or anything .. period.

When I called her that Saturday around noon and asked her if she had seen the storm, her voice was completely disquieting. She said, "Oh yeah, we're going to Orlando .. this one is BAD .. you're welcome to come with us." I was stunned nearly speechless .. of all people I expected to hear quaking about a storm. I was truly shocked .. I had an immediate attitude adjustment and total deliverance from my relaxing Saturday reverie in that second.

I said "No .. I haven't even thought about leaving .... do you really think we're gonna get it?" She was frim .. “We’re getting ready now .. I’m leaving.. this one's too big.” We hung up, and my head spun with disjointed thoughts, dizzy with the cacaphony of worry, confusion, chores and todo's darting in and out of my brain.

I realized I'd have to evacuate due to my location (there was an official evacuation order anyway by Sunday), and called my friends out in the rural Redlands and asked if I could stay with them out west from me in the grove and farmland area. As it turned out, my friend was visiting relatives for a week, but her husband said fine. So, I would clear everything that could be a dangerous missile from the front and back yards and deck, bring everything in, and then I'd take my pet bird and valuables, etc. and go.

I swung into gear, and for the rest of the day and until Sunday afternoon, I confiscated every rock, plant, tool, piece of furniture, stick, pot that could be a dangerous flying object. I had paths in my townhouse, squirreling through the mass of objects. I could barely squeeze by the ironing board filled with plants, and shimmy around the ladder and boxes of tools, etc. in my bedroom. I was going to make sure I did everything I was supposed to do.

That night, I watched half of Billy Crystal's "City Slickers" I had rented at the Blockbuster's around the corner, and then was too antsy to watch the rest. I got a few days of clothes, important papers, etc. together for my departure. The next morning, I went to church, and came back to resume my checklist of outdoor object recon, and gathered some canned goods, bird food, my portable smoker/bbq and got my bird into a travel cage. By the time I felt comfortable I had done all I could do, I packed the car. But I put off leaving as late as I could .. I was feeling dread. It was about 7pm, and a light rain was falling. On the way, I stopped by Blockbuster and put the video in the return drawer.

I got out to my friends' house, a tiny 900 sq.ft. Spanish stucco house that had been moved into their 5-acre grove years earlier. Typical older S.FL Spanish-style old house: barrel tile roof, crank out windows, no screens, and deteriorated, since their new big ranch was being built about 100 yds behind this house. Sonny greeted me with their 3 dogs. He helped me unload my car, and we decided I'd park my car in the garage of the new house. Even though there were no garage doors, it was at least under cover and I was confident in the construction.

I was surprised that there were no boards up at the windows .. no preparations done to the house. Sonny is a very handy Mr. Fixit type. We got my stuff settled, had some coffee, watched TV and had the radio on with Brian Norcross, the hero and calm guide across the airwaves to the frightened thousands. My friend, his wife, called, and we talked a couple of times with her. The last call was around 4am, and things by then were really ugly . . in the middle of the call, the power and phone line were gone. We were in the pitch dark, and I took my flashlight and stuffed the bird in the guest room closet under a pile of clothes, and went back to the living room. By that time, the wind was ferocious, actually sounded like a horn section .. blowing, blaring, honking .. penetrating every crack and crevice in the window and door frames.

When they talk about a train roaring, it's true .. a vicious, deafening, menacing roar. We're were in an avocado and mango grove, and the fruit and the ceramic roof tiles on the new house were missiles, and started breaking through the back windows. That permitted the rain to blow in furiously and totally horizontally like sharp needles. We were getting soaked, and it was a cold rain.

At one point in the chaos, I saw a piece of wood about 6' long laying against the back kitchen wall, and I suggested we nail it over at least one window to block some of the incoming. Sonny's a slight man, but he's very wiry and strong. It took all the strength we both could muster to fight this force and hold up each end to nail the wood in place.

By this time, we were dripping from the rain and shivering cold, and as the fury intensified, we realized we had to move more into the middle of the house.. away from what was coming in the windows. We straddled the wall between the eating area and first bedroom, but then the bedroom windows were penetrated, and rain was spewing in there .. curtains whipping around, bedding and clothes in the closet getting soaked, door swinging wildly.

Our last refuge in this tiny house was a couple of feet in, outside the closed bathroom door in front of the linen closet door and across from the tiny guest bedroom where I would end up staying, and praying the bathroom and guestroom doors on the north and west side would hold. All 5 of us huddled there in one glob, squeezed in tight away from the flailing bedroom door, and not one sound was uttered ..for 30-40 mins., even by the 3 dogs. That’s always amazed me… that we never spoke, and the dogs never growled or barked. I never heard one peep from my parrot the whole time. We were like petrified statues ... until I heard what sounded like breathing. I told Sonny to shine his flashlight on the ceiling above us. That caused us to gasp .... the little crawl space door to the attic was heaving .. like lungs .. inhaling, exhaling.

We kept waiting for the eye .. and I decided that when the eye came, I'd grab my purse, the bird, and we'd take the dogs and run to my old car in the garage and ride it out there. Sonny became agitated .. jumping out of his skin with fear. It started to quiet down noticeably, and daylight had started dawning gray, so he'd run to the back door and look out and yell --"Ok, it's calm .. let's go." I'd grab the bird and purse and get there and see things still flying through the air. "No, .. when it's the eye, it's dead calm .. we can't go." He did that twice more, each time more antsy to get out of the house, and I had to almost slap him... he was nearly apoplectic.

Finally, things just gradually quieted more and more .. the sun was out and it was over...it was probably about 7 am. I realized afterward, that we never did get the eye. Andrew was so compact and tightly wound that the eye missed our area.

We looked out, and the new house survived, minus some of the roof tiles that had flown into our place, and thank God .. my car looked fine in the garage. Everything was soaked: the floor, carpet, carpet padding, furniture, clothes .. and we were emotionally spent, weak and really in dazed shock. I took the sofa and Sonny flopped in the guest room. The letdown from all the adrenaline was huge .. I was as limp as a dishrag .. and just collapsed in a coma-like sleep of relief.

I awoke about 4 hours later, and really got a good look at the mess inside. When Sonny woke up, we started pulling up carpet, padding, sweeping up the broken glass, and started dragging out the wet clothes to dry on the trees. Sonny started boarding up the busted back windows (which I sure wish he had done before). We talked to some neighbors and heard that miraculously there was a pay phone working at the main intersection about a mile away. I told Sonny I had to call my family. So, for the first time in my life, I hitchhiked and got a ride. The damage was everywhere and astounding. There was a line of about 20 people .. all subdued, numb.. and we all quietly waited our turn, and made a really short call so as not to keep the next person waiting.

I let my Mom know I was OK and told her to call the family and then caught a ride part way back and walked the rest. As I walked up the back stairs to the kitchen, I looked up and got the answer to the heaving lungs. From the left side of the house, about 2 ft. above the back door, was a deep fissure about 12 ft. long split into the stucco just under the roof, 3 ft. from the end of house. Had the fury lasted much longer, there's no doubt it would've finished lifting the roof off.

I don't remember much of that first night, except there was no power, there were mosquitoes, and the flashlight in bed with me.

The next day, I couldn't stand not knowing the condition of my house and was anxious to go. Sonny thought it was dangerous for me to do there alone, but I had to see it. I knew my car was fine,and I wasn't going to risk getting a flat tire with all the debris.. So, I hitchhiked with 2 guys in a truck who took me halfway there to a major intersection. I couldn't believe my eyes .. I was transported to a bizarro world. I knew this intersection like the back of my hand, and I couldn't recognize anything. The landscape had been totally rearranged. We had passed a dead horse in the road, power poles down, roads blocked and new detours made through yards and groves, greenhouse cloth hung and draped eerily between tall pines .. like sick Halloween decorations. I walked about 1/2 mi. when I saw a Dade Cty. van coming toward me. I motioned him over and asked if he'd be so kind as to drive me to my place, which he did.

When I got near my townhouse, I could see the sheet metal pieces and fragments laying everywhere and piercing everything in the area from the trailer parks across the street.

I couldn't believe my eyes: mine was the middle unit of a 7-unit lakeside bldg. The 3 units connected to mine to the east were just crumbs .. all there was left was particles of possessions of 3 homes on slabs and strewn around. Roof trusses and truss ribs were lying everywhere. There was one elderly couple in my court who never left. I was shocked they had stayed and survived at ground zero of the storm. She was sweeping water out the front door, and I asked her if she'd come in to my unit with me, 'cause I was scared to see the damage alone. She did and it was awful. So my unit was the first one with a wall standing on the east side... my INTERIOR wall. In the ensuing months, it became obvious that these units, which had been built in the early 70’s, were built with criminal negligence. The concrete I-beams weren’t even tied down to the foundations. I looked out across the lake to the shopping center .. it was decimated, along with Blockbuster .. and my dutifully returned video was among the ruins.

Reports afterward claimed that my development had the record for having the most people die in one place. Many were retired and refused to leave their “their stuff,” and the concrete beams crushed them as they crashed to the ground.

The name of the contractor was Judah Construction– and if he had been in business at the time of Hurricane Andrew, I feel fairly confident that criminal charges would’ve been brought against him, if one of the residents didn't get to him him first. The bldg. inspectors who approved this shoddy work should've been hung.

A home in Naranja Lakes in which four adults survived They took refuge in an interior closet

After Andrew, the condominium association had to be dissolved so that the master insurance policy could be redeemed to pay the owners for the value of their structures … the first time in history that was done at the time. But then since there was no association, there was no governing authority to monitor the group's actions and the alleged fraud, corruption and irregularities that occurred in the years afterward and prior to the whole property being cleared for sale in one lump parcel to a developer.

Concrete block stucco construction survived the winds - I believe this is the area where I was able to rent a room for a couple of months, until a dry and stable place was found. These homes were bunkers ..poured concrete, even the roofs and they were untouched .. and only 5 mins. from my place. They had been built in the 50's and 60's for snowbirds. This is one sure way to survive hurricanes and tornadoes in Florida.

One of my neighbors was checking his unit, and I asked him to help me kick in my office door .. something was blocking the door. He kicked it in and the back wall was without some of the concrete blocks ..open to the outside. The roof was splayed open between the roof truss ribs and there was the sky. The same in my bedroom and kitchen. All my carefully removed items from the outside were so many missiles inside instead ... and everything was strewn and soaked everywhere and dripping with white glop. Within a couple of days, we got rain, so now there was water pouring on my stuff, making life, salvaging and spirits even more raw and miserable. Good lesson: NEVER put in popcorn ceilings.

I stayed with my friends for about a month. There wasn't any FEMA, Red Cross or Salvation Army for days and days. The reports were true .. people were without water, power, food, clothes, medical care and shelter. People were genuinely at risk, and the government and emergency folks just didn't respond at all like they do now. It was August in FL, brutal temps and humidity, mosquitoes, roaches foraging in the gunk, bugs .. pure hell every day for months. They sure did learn after Andrew.

My friend's boss brought out a generator, and that made a huge difference, but we were on our own. We cleared out the canned good cupboard for meals, and rationed the generator for morning coffee and quick hot water showers. After about a week, when I was salvaging, wonderfully kind people started driving up randomly in cars or pickups out of the goodness of their hearts, with bread and food and supplies. They were angels. But no law enforcement showed up way down south in the country for well over a week, and it was awful .. so scary. Every day, my job was salvaging anything that survived. I was thankful for my disorganization when I found two boxes of family pictures intact and dry in a closet. The looting was getting more open and frightening .. people were toting guns.

It was a bad scene, and the Dade County Emergency Director, Kate Hale, finally couldn’t take it anymore, and pleaded for help:

”Three days passed between Andrew's assault and the arrival of federal help. Kate Hale, the Dade County emergency director, went on live national television on 27 August with tears in her eyes and castigated the federal government. Some of her comments were:

"Enough is enough. Quit playing like a bunch of kids. Where in the Hell is the cavalry? For God's sakes, where are they? We are going to have more casualties, because we are going to have more people dehydrated. People without water. People without food. Babies without formula. If we do not get more food into the south end of Dade County in a very short period of time, we are going to have more casualties!

We have a catastrophic disaster. We are essentially the walking wounded. We have appealed through the State to the Federal Government. We've had a lot of people down here for press conferences, but Dade County is on its own. Dade County is being caught in the middle of something and we are being victimized. Quit playing like a bunch of kids and get us aid! Sort out your political games afterward!

We are all about ready to drop, and the reinforcements are not getting in fast enough. We need better National Guard down here...President Bush was down here. I'd like him to follow up on the commitments he made.

At the time of the speech, three days after the storm, 250,000 Florida residents were struggling to survive without food, water and shelter. The nationwide uproar reached Washington DC and President Bush immediately ordered 30,000 troops to the disaster area. Lieutenant General Samuel Ebbeson (a former deputy of General Schwarzkopf during the Persian Gulf War) was placed in charge of the military relief effort.“

The arrival of the National Guard, the 10th Mountain Div. and the 82nd Airborne in a couple of weeks finally was a godsend. They saved us, fed us, directed traffic, supplied us with necessities, put up tent cities, instituted curfews and finally restored a semblance of order and sanity. Thank God for them ... utter chaos and anarchy had broken out, people were strained beyond their patience. Then the other service agencies arrived with more support, and the skies were soon black with news choppers and military choppers, ferrying supplies.

The aid that eventually made it down to us was incredible and was there for months and months because it was desperately needed. There were still people in FEMA trailers 18 mos. later. The generosity and help of our Florida neighbors, the awesome military troops, national and local companies, church groups, utility crews, and relief and service agencies sure was mightily appreciated.

A former Viet Nam pilot among the great military there,looking down on my neighborhood, said it was worse than Viet Nam .. and it was exactly where the bomb went off. People were in in food lines, phone lines, and mail lines from 3-5 months plus.

Hurricane Andrew - Long lines waiting for ice ration following Andrew Following major disasters, refrigeration assumes a high priority

After the streets were relatively free from debris, I felt fairly safe using my car to go to salvage .. which I did for about 6 months, helping friends as well.. that was my daily job. I still got flat tires anyway. What was so very disorienting and upsetting for months was having all the anchors in my life .. my things .. my red dress, favorite earrings, hair curlers, serving dishes, a certain necklace .. everything that was part of my life .. strewn, buried, hard to find and away from me and subject to theft … it’s was agonizing. It sounds silly and I do believe that life and people come before things, but the order of your things and knowledge of where they are and their safety had more impact and affect than I ever knew.

What happened in the next 6-12 months made living there intolerable for me. All the construction people, opportunists, addicts and wackos made a beeline for the area for the insurance and rebuilding $$, along with the decent and earnest workers, but there were no places to live. They made pup tent communes or lived like nomads, bathing in canals, urinating in public, hanging around at the one open supermarket that was able to open, when they weren't working, and collecting daily pay when they did. Then at night, they'd spend it all at the bar or on drugs and menace the neighborhoods. 3 times, there were drunks unconscious in the backyard. The last straw was a 4am knock on the door by a gun-toting creature looking for a cigarette. He was also met with a gun, and walked away but shot at the roof as he left.

I relocated to the west coast almost 2 years after Andrew to start all over again..I couldn't take the crime and living like a prisoner any longer, and the west coast had been fairly untouched. The experience left me with terrible anxiety attacks that lasted for years. It was 6 months before I could drive alone again without panic attacks, and I had loved driving before Andrew .. never gave it a thought. To this day, I cannot stand high winds .. I become unglued .. very pacey and agitated .. there definitely is PTSS. In the traumatic days and months, little moments during the storm time were forgotten until years later, popping into my head like one of those turtles that swam in my lake.

After Andrew, the whole South Dade area took on a wild west and tense atmosphere, and the complexion, landscape and mood of the area changed drastically.

One of the saddest things was the people you'd see regularly at the cleaners or the gas station or hardware store were just gone. You didn't know them by name, they were just fixtures and familiar faces in your life .. and they were gone .. to places unknown .. never to be seen by you again or know what happened to them.

All those who decided to stay right after were frustrated, depressed and weary, and there was gobs of insurance and emergency funds floating around and an abundance of vultures all too willing to victimize very vulnerable people and compound the misery. BTW, the worst name you could call someone was “roofer” ... that was a curse word.

The sights and mostly the stench .. they just wore you down, and then dealing with paperwork and bureaucracies ..life just got depressing and infurating at times, and tempers got very short. Deep South Dade was a beautifully lush, botanical paradise .. palms, tall pines and oaks .. and those were just bent or cut down to ugly sticks or just gone. The countryside looked sad .. just pitiful, and it brought you down more. There were increased divorces and suicides afterward .. the stress just tore people and couples apart.

My unit was robbed ultimately. I had left some serving pieces and small appliances in my undamaged utility room. There were locked steel security doors and windows on my unit, but someone actually got in through a hole in the roof and had passed items down to someone out front on the grass before they got scared off, which I found when I arrived to get some platters for Thanksgiving dinner. After all the hell, that just broke my heart...as trivial as it was, in light of everything else .. it was an invasion I bitterly resented.

The Holiday Inn along the Turnpike in south Dade County. Almost every window, and a few doors, were blown out; and much of the main roof sign was gone. It took two direct eyewall hits sandwiched around a short period inside the northern part of the eye -- and remained largely intact. Despite the ugly superficial damage, this steel-reinforced concrete edifice stayed structurally sound, and soon reopened for business.

Royal palm impaled by a 1X4 board just north of Homestead, looking N. This was near the inner edge of the eyewall. The board was somehow aligned almost perfectly in 120+ kt flow, with the vertical axis of the palm, and at exactly the right time, to cause this oddity. Another view of the same thing is shown in (I saw several penetrated trees like this)

"The damage survey showed the peak winds in both the front and back eyewalls to be at nearly right angles to the circular isobars. Thus a transient associated with convection that might cause increased inflow into the convective cells would cause the air to cool and parcels to be forced downward in much the same manner as a down burst, which would enhance the inward acceleration.

It is thus hypothesized that periodic surges of surface super-gradient flow penetrated into the clear eye producing several momentary wind transients, the strongest of which occurred over Naranja Lakes. These periodic transients appear to be associated with eyewall supercell convection that was triggered at the coast by enhance frictional convergence as the eyewall moved across the shoreline. Analysis of the Tampa radar data showed that 7 convective cells were triggered at the coast line about every 12 minutes and lasted about 10 minutes as they traveled around the eyewall, reaching peak reflectivities in the southwest quadrant. Each eyewall cell appears to have a had a wind transient associated with it, with the one passing over Naranja Lakes being the strongest."

I'm so grateful to God we survived .. I know several people who ended up in their bathtub under a mattress, with nothing but sky above. I've never returned to S. FL, after living there for over 25 years, though I've been invited back for visits with friends, and have no desire to go back .. too many scars and nauseating memories. Dealing with last year's hurricanes on the west coast, lying in the dark under a mattress in the hallway, listening to the wind's fury overhead and praying the roof would hold .. well, that finally put the final nail in the coffin of living in Florida for me. "Get out" were the words reverberating in my head non-stop for days .. like Morse code from God, and I was out of there and on my way north in a month. I'll be dealing with winter, snow and bitter cold, something I'd sworn for years I'd never do again, but I will now gladly deal with that over hurricanes anytime. It’s been enough for 3 lifetimes. I now say that God is the director, and I'm just trying to learn my lines.

I'm sure those who suffered through Ivan, Charley, Jeanne and Frances experienced the same emotional ups and downs and physical strain of it all as I did with Andrew. Thankfully, the lesson was learned with Andrew about getting aid and supplies in quickly in such disasters. I don't think there will be the extreme suffering and crime that we experienced in future disasters. I pray there won't be.

There's so much I didn't find out about that time for years later, you just stay in a state of shock, without electricity for months, and you're totally shut off from the world outside, and even what's happening in the next town. You're focused on necessities and the next task at hand for months and months. There's much I still don't know about that time that I keep learning. I'm wondering how many other FReepers there are who survived Andrew in South Dade .. I hope you'll chime in. I'll never forget it nor that God is good. I get involuntary internal jitters every time a new storm starts brewing in the Atlantic or Gulf, and I have so much empathy for the folks dealing with the current volatile hurricane season, and pray these monsters just stay away. I don't say never anymore ... at least not with much conviction.

"Yep, as well as the AIDS infected monkeys that were on the loose"

I remember a friend wondering how AIDS infected monkeys could be a problem, supposing that one actually has to consumate relations with them to get the AIDS.

At one point during the days after Andrew, a couple of small antelope looking animals came bounding through my yard, followed moments later by running soldiers. My dogs were outraged, to say the least.

Oh yeah . .. that demographic got worse with the abandoned homes and those who were hungry to leave and sold cheap. Krome Ave. was plagued with refugees of all stripes .. and you DID NOT want to go there. All those businesses dried up afterward. I think it's being revived now, but with the storm damage and infrastructure, the severe economic blow to the area, and imported produce, the whole area, including the ag base, suffered horribly, and the farmers finally sold out to developers. That's the saddest thing to me. I used to be able to go to the fields and pick the greatest veggies .. there's was always a U-pick field open for something.

One of the scariest things was in deep deep South Dade, there was a primate research facility, and they got decimated, and the chimps ran wild.

I was helping a friend salvage down there, and we looked up and there was a little darting chimp in the exposed rafters. No one knew how diseased they were or what diseases they carried . .. caused quite a bit of mass panic.

This is my INTERIOR wall that was the first EXTERIOR standing wall after the fury. The 3 connected units there were brought down to a pile of trusses, I-beams, and particles of furniture and possessions spread across the slabs .. nothing survived in those 3 units.

Outside shots -(Webshots won't let me load the pics with and "img src" prompt for some reason -- this is the only way the picture can be viewed right now) Just copy and paste into your browser:

Outside View of the INTERIOR wall that became an EXTERIOR wall:

http://image62.webshots.com/62/7/6/13/432370613PJhyOM_ph.jpg

Inside View - before demolition and after the mini dozers had been in scraping away the debris:

http://image62.webshots.com/62/7/20/61/432372061aYkkdw_ph.jpg

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