Exclusive: Andrew Victim Gets Power After 15 Years

CBS4 Miami ^ | 2-18-07 | Natalea Zea

[STARWISE]

Shoddy Repairs Prevented Her From Connecting Electricity Volunteers Helped End 15 Years Of Cold Showers

***

An elderly woman who had been living without power in her home due to hurricane damage was finally seeing the light Friday night, when power to her home was restored.

(snip)

.....she's been living without power to her house since August 24, 1992.

No heat when the winter chill settled over South Florida. No air conditioning when the mercury climbed into the 90's and the humidity clung to 100% .

Not one hot shower at home in nearly 15 years. Every morning started with an icy blast.

"I think it's like everything, you learn how to step into it, and wait, and when you feel it, you take your quick shower," she recalled.

(snip)

Like many people after that horrific storm, she had a problem with an unscrupulous contractor, and when the money from the insurance settlement ran out, the contractor did too, leaving her home half-repaired and not up to code, which meant it would not have the electricity connected.

(snip)

"It just never got done, and the money was gone, so I couldn't do a lot of things to allow me with Dade county to get my power back on," she said.

(snip)

She celebrated the new millennium with one tiny lamp and a single burner. On the 10th anniversary of Andrew in 2002, her neighbors celebrated their recovery; she was still living in the disaster.

Electrical contractor Kent Crook was amazed when he saw how she managed to get a tiny amount of electricity into the house for a Spartan existence.

"She has extension cords running into her house, plugged into a tiny little refrigerator and a cook top, and a lamp or two in front of her house," he marveled.

[NautiNurse]

This is a very strange story. The video indicates she is not homebound (they described how she came home to lights on Friday). She was ambulatory in the video as well. For dramatic effect, they described her taking "icy showers" for 15 years. Every south FL resident knows that for much of the year, cold water runs warm out of the tap.

There is much more to the story than information provided.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

How  do you square this:

An elderly woman who had been living without power in her home due to hurricane damage was finally seeing the light Friday night, when power to her home was restored.

with this:

Electrical contractor Kent Crook was amazed when he saw how she managed to get a tiny amount of electricity into the house for a Spartan existence.

"She has extension cords running into her house, plugged into a tiny little refrigerator and a cook top, and a lamp or two in front of her house," he marveled.
 

She had power - she was not "without power". What she didn't have was service, as in a drop line and a premise registered as an account with the local utility.

WTF is happening to journalism these days?

[CDHart]

"I would of been running wire and getting stuff hooked up for her. "

In a lot of areas, it's against the law to work on residential wiring unless you're licensed to do it. That may have stopped people from giving her that kind of help. But you'd think they could have done something - alert social services or something or the FEMA people. Give them something legit to do with their time.

Carolyn

[SuziQ]

Having been through it, you understand, more than most, how the folks along the MS Gulf Coast feel right now. We have family there, and we're planning to move there in the next few months, when we've got our house remodeled and sold. The biggest problem there right now is the lack of housing because of the insurance situation. Many folks can't re-build because they don't have the money, and many are worried that they won't be able to afford insurance if they DO re-build.

Many folks have not moved back because they didn't have flood insurance, and their insurance companies are not paying for the damage because they're saying it was all caused by water. In some instances, that's true, but in many cases, the winds had blown the houses apart before the water ever arrived. The problem for the homeowners has been PROVING that to the satisfaction of the insurance companies. There were some who bought flood insurance, at the urging of their insurance agents, even though they didn't live in what was normally considered a flood zone. The agents caught flack from some folks for trying to sell people coverage they didn't need, but those agents were universally loved by their clients after the storm, because there was no question about their coverage.

[RipSawyer]

WTF is happening to journalism these days?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Probably nothing new, twenty five years ago I started a business which I initially operated from my home. There was a lot of interest in home based business at the time and a reporter from the local paper called me and asked me a lot of questions and (with my permission) ran a story. He screwed things up so badly that a few weeks later when the local TV station wanted to do a story on my home based business I told them I was not interested. Most of these people don't know up from down and as the old saying goes, "couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the directions were printed on the heel". That is the honest ones, of course, many of them are not above deliberately falsifying a story as has become apparent in recent years.