30 Years Since Hurricane Andrew

I was doing some nighttime security work to get through school at the time and they sent me to a community center to watch over all those displaced there. Some really troubling stories of loss over those few nights.
Also, a friend's brother made a fortune selling overpriced lumber after the storm. Never liked that guy and after taking advantage of those people lost all respect.

 

I was in southern Broward county where the storm was supposed to go when we "went to bed". Thank goodness it didn't and turned south. Not for personal reasons, just that it would have tracked through more populated areas.

Drove down with my brother the next morning and volunteered at a school that was turned into an emergency shelter. Heartbreaking helping those folks. And the devastation was shocking.

EDIT: I remember someone on the news saying Florida was to Andrew what an empty cardboard box was to a tractor trailer on the highway. That was a sobering realization for me and many others.

 

Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson was a good read if you like hurricanes. Fascinating look into the early years of meteorology - and of course, as Blue Oyster Cult once said, history shows again again how nature points out the foley of man.

 

Its pretty wild that Florida had no building code until after Andrew wrecked the state

 

My two strongest memories of Andrew:

The most helpless was rolling up to a house to help put a tarp on the roof, and there was no roof. Literally nothing left above the walls. Nothing we could do for that family, terrible feeling.

The other abiding memory I have is of a uhaul truck upside down on top of a building.

 

Along those same lines is Category 5, the Labor Day Hurricane about the 1935 storm hitting the middle Keys. Fascinating stuff

 

I was in Naples and only lost 13 trees - not bad. Shortly after Andrew I went to Homestead to help a Buddy put tar paper and shingles back on his roof - and bring him 12ga shells and a generator. I was on the roof rolling out tar paper and glanced up to see kids in the in the road in the distance. In a few more minutes I watched, gobsmacked and rubbing my eyes as those “kids” became baboons holding hands walking down the road. Later, listened to a radio dispatch for an FWC officer to go remove 5 baboons from a woman’s house. A primate breeding center was destroyed in the storm. Also, a neighbor of my friend had a reptile supply business with some very hot snakes that was completely leveled. Who knows what happened to them and if they survived. It was a crazy time.

 

Before Andrew most of Florida was under the Southern Standard Building Code. Some of the south Florida counties were under the South Florida Building code. It wasn't until after Andrew that wind loads and wind zones were taken seriously. I believe it was around 93 when the state of Florida adopted the Deemed To Comply which was a minimum standard for wind design.

 

I remember that some very shoddy building practices were revealed in some very high-end homes. You have to wonder how they pa$$ed inspection. Figured prominently in a Hiassen novel.
Also remember a neighborhood of $35,000 Habitat for Humanity homes took a direct hit and all came through OK. President Carter said they built them to exceed code.

Habitat for Humanity Homes in Hurricane's Path Tough as Nails

 

Something to be gleaned from the profit-driven market cutting corners even on high-end homes vs. a not for profit building entry level housing better than required, of course 30 years later I dont think we've gleaned it, but at least there's a comprehensive statewide building code

 

Andrew is made a lot of us realize you don't have to be right on the coast to lose your home. It was a wakeup and probably the reason so many evacuated from Floyd.

 

I left to go to Central Broward. Davie. Relatively mild night; shocking to see the damage the next day. Storm surge nearly to the top of the lighthouse at the end of Key Biscayne.

 

My great uncle was one of the many Overseas Railroad workmen that died in the Labor Day hurricane, so I've read several books on the subject, including "Storm of the Century."

It's funny Andrew should come up--this hurricane season has gotten off to a very slow start, but as the weather guys point out, Andrew didn't show up until Aug. 23. The forecasters still believe potential hurricanes are going to start ramping up in the next month.

 

The story about the lighthouse keepers at Alligator Reef is riveting.

 

I was gigging on a Canaveral to Nassau cruise ship. In Nassau, our bass player grabbed me by the arm and said "we gotta go, the ship is leaving." Our ship left 8hrs early and so we rode out the storm in the Atlantic, bobbing and weaving. I always wondered how many passengers & crew didn't get the memo. This was my last cruise and when I drove back to Gainesville, there were trees down on the turnpike almost all the way up to Orlando. The toll booths were unoccupied. Just rolled through.

 

It's funny now but Hurricane Andrew cost me about 6 months of my spare time I had spent in the months before Andrew. I got this brilliant idea for a movie script based partly on my experiences as a 10 year old during Hurricane Donna in 1960. It was about 2 brothers who had lost their parents to Hurricane Donna. One grew up to be a police chief on a Florida coastal island (sort of like Chief Brodie in Jaws) the other was a charter boat captain. The Chief during the early part of the script was trying to get island residents to evacuate. The answer he was getting from many of them was "We have lived here all our lives and never seen a storm we had to run from". The other brother heard a distress call and went out to try to rescue the folks broke down off the coast. Then the storm hits and all hell broke loose......I finished the script just before Andrew hit. Once Andrew hit my story became garbage because everybody took hurricanes seriously after that.

 

Andrew reformed a lot of people who wanted to ride it out. The friend I mentioned in Homestead was that way. Born and raised and still living in S.E. Florida, that had always been his attitude. When we got to his house a few days after Andrew, he was still shaken. When the storm hit and his house was shaking, he and his teenage son had braced their backs against the front door and their feet against the opposite wall of the entryway and fought to keep the door shut. He said he knew if the door blew open like it was trying to do, his roof was going and they might all die. The house shook so violently that it cracked his CBS house and he said he will never ride one out again.