10 Year Anniversay of Hurricane Andrew
TV ClubHouse: Archive: 10 Year Anniversay of Hurricane Andrew
Grooch | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 08:01 am     House broke -- but we didn't mourn our losses BY LEONARD PITTS We thought it would be fun. Ten years later, that still makes me shake my head. My wife and I figured the wind would howl, the rain would drum and the storm would raise a violent but impotent fist against the house. Maybe the lights would go out and we'd sit inside with the kids, safe and cozy, telling ghost stories and playing Monopoly by candlelight. It would be scary, but not that bad. And if that sounds foolish, well . . . we were from Los Angeles. What did we know about hurricanes? The truth is we didn't even realize Hurricane Andrew was coming until just before it arrived. We'd been on the road and out of touch with South Florida for a week. Driving home on the day of the storm, we stopped for gas in Daytona Beach and checked in with our neighbors in South Dade. ''Stay there,'' they pleaded. Ha ha, we said. Such kidders. Which is how we came to ride out the worst storm in modern memory in a house fortified only by tape on the windows. When it was over, we clambered out of the rubble of our home and learned that most of our worldly possessions were quite literally gone with the wind. One of the cars had a tree through it. My computer was sodden. The television was face down in a pool of water. The albums in my record collection -- we're talking maybe 3,000 pieces -- had been glued together by rain. You pulled them apart and destroyed them. Images had been erased from photographs. Furniture that seemed sound later warped and cracked. And the house itself was totaled, the living room littered with huge pink puffs of insulation and bright sunlight pouring in from where the ceiling had been. My youngest daughter was a week and a half from her second birthday. Struggling to explain the carnage to her, my wife said simply, ''House broke.'' She might just as well have said, ''Lives broke.'' Because they were. We leaned on each other, speaking softly, reverent in the face of such awesome destruction. Yet we never wept. Not once, from that day to this. Never felt blindsided by sorrow, never stopped to mourn the things we had lost. I used to think maybe we were in shock, disconnected from the pain. I am, after all, a man who loves his stuff, a keeper of old newspapers, books and magazines, a collector of CDs, videos and comic books. If you had told me beforehand that so much of my library -- irreplaceable stuff, valuable stuff, sentimental stuff -- would be damaged, lost, destroyed, I'd have predicted the pain would feel not unlike a knife through the heart. All of us carry through life so many possessions and prizes, so much detritus. We love it so fiercely, are defined by it so completely, that sometimes it's hard to tell whether we have stuff or stuff has us. And yes, everyone pays lip service to the ideal that, well . . . material things don't matter. But I'm here to tell you that you can't appreciate how little they matter until you've been threatened with losing a whole lot more. And I was. On the night of the storm, my kitchen ceiling split open a half second after I pulled my wife clear. The storm spat water at us through the peephole of the front door, the walls of the house rose and fell like a sleeper's chest. I spent the night with my family in a bedroom closet, listening to unseen breakings and bangings as the storm hurled itself angrily against the house. I talked to God. I wondered what it felt like to die. We spent much of the next day cataloging material loss, ours and others'. That night, wandering through the kitchen by flashlight, I paused to gaze at the stars. I didn't know where we would go or what we would do. But resting there in the stillness, I simply could not make myself mourn or fear. The world around me was jet black. But there were more suns in heaven than I ever knew. |
Twiggyish | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 08:12 am     My family lives in the area. One cousin and her mother spent time huddling in their house. They too, watched the walls move in and out. Another cousin and family also spent their time in a closet. This is how many people weathered the storm. Thankfully, no one in my family was hurt, but they all have memories that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Before the hurricane, I remember calling family members to warn them of Andrew's possible landfall. Several of them, were not aware of it. They weren't worried. Now, whenever there is a possible hurricane, they take immediate precautions. Andrew came across the state where I live, but by that time, he was greatly reduced to a rain storm. |
Grooch | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 08:12 am     Some pictures.
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Grooch | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 08:16 am    
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Grooch | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 08:18 am    
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Grooch | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 08:19 am    
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Grooch | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 08:21 am     A postcard shows what this part of Fairchild Tropical Gardens, a world-class botanical garden and tourist destination in South Dade, looked like before Andrew. The landscape will take decades to restore.
A typical ice line which had about 5,000 people.
Looting occurred at T.J. Max on US1 and S. 184th St. in South Dade. All along US1, most powerlines were either down or had damage and all buildings showed signs of the destructive force of Andrew. Here, downed electric wires and broken traffic lights frame a looter who tries to cross the highway. |
Twiggyish | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 08:22 am     Those pictures are so horrible! |
Grooch | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 08:26 am     Looters everywhere for months since there was no electricty.
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Grooch | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 08:30 am     The Army set up tents for those whose homes were destroyed, but most stayed away to protect what was left of their property.
Bringing relief supplies back home
Living in a tent city. |
Grooch | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 08:34 am    
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Twiggyish | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 08:35 am     We were expecting the devastation on our coast, but by the time he came over, he had been greatly reduced. Thank God!! I cried the whole time when it was on the east coast, because I knew my loved ones were there. It was where I grew up and it was my hometown being destroyed. |
Twiggyish | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 08:39 am     The frightening part, is that we could have another Andrew! |
Juju2bigdog | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 08:50 am     Thanks, Grooch. We were gone from South Florida by then, but I had lots of friends who lived through it. Simply astonishing. People couldn't even find where their houses used to be because all the street signs were gone and everything looked so different. |
Grooch | Saturday, August 24, 2002 - 09:32 am     Thanks, Twiggy and Juju. I had moved to Miami one month before Andrew hit. I remember when it was coming across the ocean, it was heading in a straight line. The path never changed. I had been in a few hurricanes in NY, so when I went out to get supplies, everyone, and I mean everyone, was laughing at me. They all thought I was crazy. They had never had a hurricane hit here before. By the time everyone else went to go get prepared it was to late. I was lucky. I lived about 10 miles north of the end of path of destruction. I don't want to even imagine what it must have been like 10 miles closer. It was horrendous enough where I was. And if the storm had been closer, I doubt my apt building would have lasted. I spent 1/2 the night hiding in the bathroom. I was living in a 4 apt complex, on the 2nd story, and my bedroom had some flooding from the rain being pounded through the cement walls. But we were lucky. I was pretty well prepared for afterwards. I had a gas grill that I made sure I had a full tank of propane, I had gotten plenty of cash on hand and I filled up the cars with gas. I remember people digging holes in the ground to make a fire so they could boil water. We went about 2 weeks with no electricity. And I mean no electricity for miles and miles. We were lucky it was so short a time. I think I drove for a month in Miami with no traffic lights. It made driving very interesting. But I was lucky because I still had a car that wasn't destroyed and also that my job hadn't been destroyed in the hurricane. So many people lost everything. There houses, their belongings, their cars and their jobs. It literally looked liked a huge bomb had been dropped on southern florida. I am still amazed to this day that more people were not killed. I remember going to a job interview 3 months later, and it was in the area of the 10 mile cutoff point that I mentioned above. I still could barely drive through the streets. It still looked like the hurricane had hit the week before. Driving down to the keys a year later, in some parts, it still looked like the hurricane had still hit. To this day, when the clouds form a certain way and the wind blows, I still freak out about Andrew. |
Abbynormal | Sunday, August 25, 2002 - 11:00 pm     I worked at a mortgage company that was the largest in the southeast at the time of Andrew. We held many, many mortgages of homes destroyed. I remember feeling such a sense of loss for these people. The sheer number of hazard claims were mind boggling and took months and months to resolve. But at least these people had insurance to claim on, I know there had to be alot who lost everything with no way to re-build. So sad. |
Danzdol | Tuesday, August 27, 2002 - 03:16 pm     I consider myself extremely lucky. I rode the hurricane out at home. I lived 25 minutes North of the hardest hit site. I had really bad wind where I would hear the door shake like in the movies when there is some force trying to break down your door. My parents put our big screen tv in front of it to keep it from flapping open. We only had a little tiny bit of flooding in the living room. The eerie part was what Grooch said, driving with no lights and living for a couple of weeks with no electricity. The smell of BBQ was in the air! There was a general calm feeling around my area. People would sit out in their porches to talk and spend time together and we actually met everyone on the block. The shock came when we got out electricity back and saw the images. We did not know how lucky we were until then. |
Rolandcat | Saturday, September 07, 2002 - 10:19 pm     I rode out Andrew in an apartment on 136th street by The Falls. It was four stories. My apt. faced east and I was on the bottom corner. Mine was the only one on that side that did not have a window blown out. I had flooding but I consider myself so lucky. The apt. complex next door was blown down to the bare walls. No front wall, sliding glass dors, ffurniture, NOTHING until the baring walls!!! I had five kittens (five weeks old) and two cats. It was in the 80's, so you had to keep you window and doors open. The second night the National Guard was at the entrance, you could hear guns shots all night long. I stayed for three nights. my apt. had another buidling in Plantation and I was able to transfer my lease. I found out that the apt. did not get air conditioning or electricity for another six months. And I was at the end of the north wall. You can not imagine what it must have g=been like for the people in homestead. |
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