Hurricane Andrew--8/24/92!

[Poohbear123]

Tomorrow will be 12 years since Hurricane Andrew hit. My kids were 10 and 11 at the time, my Mom was alive and so were DH's parents......time flies. Also, Naranja Lakes is STILL trying to recover.

 

[eeyore kelly]

I was expecting DS who is now 11. My Dad never did rebuild boat shed.

 

[Virgo10]

I was 2 days away from a WDW trip. We knew that a lot of people had gone to Orlando to escape the path of the storm and the hotels were full. By the time we got down there, most everyone had gone back to whatever was left of their homes.

My DH went down to visit his brother in December and said that he couldn't believe how bad things were. Said he never saw anything like that in his life.

Roberta

 

[Poohbear123]

Hit so close to this same time frame. Hope we don't get another for a long long time.

 

[Talking Hands]

I was cleaning out my older daughter's room yesterday and found a remnant of Andrew. A photoggraph in a frame of her but most of the glass was gone and the few pieces are stuck to the photo. We are going to crop and scan it.
My daughter's room got the worst of it from Andrew. The hurricane shutters were literally peeled off and most of her things were destroyed. We lost all the shingles from the roof, water poured in through the ceiling and throught the ceiling fans. Most of the windows in our family room were broken, the carpeting was soaked and had to be replaced it smelled so bad. My blood pressure skyrocketed 230/170. If there had been a hospital to send me to, they would have. Instead I was sent home on medications and told to go to bed and stay there. My bed was a sleeping bag on the floor and the ceilling leaked. One daughter stepped on a nail and my other one sliced her finger on the aluminum roofing of our screen porch. We had no electricity for 2 weeks after we came home (we spent the actual storm in Ft Wilderness and stayed there a week), no phone for 2 months and no cable tv for over a year.
Miraculously 3 of our 4 cats survived in the vets whose building collapsed. We found them by chance when we drove to Publix to get ice and there was a sign posts on the vets with a phone number. Another vet had gone through the building and rescued them and other animals. He kept the cats at his clinic for 2 months at no charge until our home was cleaned up enough to allow them to come home.
My girls were 10 and 14 at the time and the main reason we stayed was for the 14 yo to attend New World School of the Arts.
There are still areas like Naranja Lakes that have never been rebuilt. We lost the Homestead Air Force Base and their families. Myyoungest daughters school looked like a movie building. Front looked great but there was nothing behind that front wall. That school spent a year sharing space at another school and then went to a portable school on the site. It was a 5 or 6 years before the school was rebuilt. Same thing happened to the school just to the south of us.
It is still etched in my memory. Not something I want to go through again.

 

[Poohbear123]

I live up here in North Dade, so I didn't really get much damage, but some trees were down. We lost our power for 4 days, and consider ourselves LUCKY! to you, and I am glad you rebuilt and stayed.

 

[Talking Hands]

Unfortunately the eye of Andrew went over our house. We live close to Country Walk basically behind Metrozoo.
Honestly I just couldn't see moving to the panhandle which is where we would have gone if we had not stayed. Glad we did but I am ready to move.
You were supposed to get Andrew's full force. At least that was what they were predicting. I know friends, who evacuated the Beach to Country Walk only to have the roofs torn from over there heads.