MIAMI – You always remember the sound of the howling wind on the morning of August 24, 1992, when Hurricane Andrew made landfall in South Florida.
The class 5 storm introduced widespread devastation to South Miami-Dade.
Some of the toughest hit communities had been Homestead, Florida City, Kendall, Perrine, and Goulds.
Homestead Air Force Base was leveled.
Mobile residence parks had been destroyed and communities like Country Walk worn out.
I used to be a reporter in Miami on the time.
I had traveled to Puerto Rico for a marriage the weekend earlier than Hurricane Andrew hit.
I obtained the final aircraft out of San Juan the day earlier than the storm made landfall.
While my residence in Coral Gables sustained solely minor harm, my household and associates misplaced houses in Kendall and had three ft of water in a member of the family’s residence in Coconut Grove.
I vividly bear in mind the National Guard troops in the streets, as giant boats that had drifted with the storm surge had been aground on Bayshore Drive.
As a reporter, I bear in mind the destruction and struggling obtained worse the farther south we drove.
My colleague Al Sunshine survived by hiding in a closet.
He woke as much as discover his residence in Southwest Miami-Dade destroyed.
Miami-Dade’s Emergency Operations Director Kate Hale obtained nationwide consideration when she known as for the cavalry, quickly 20,000 National Guard troops had been in South Florida.
FEMA arrange a tent metropolis in Homestead.
Life was tough, and it might stay that means for a very long time to return.
In the midst of the chaos, President George H. W. Bush got here to South Florida promising extra federal aid.
Neighbors turned out to assist each other, a motion that sparked the creation of what’s now Neighbors 4 Neighbors.
For these of us who lived it, the howling wind is eternally a reminder that Hurricane Andrew modified us eternally.
