Hurricanes: Their Nature and Impacts on Society - Climate Science ...

10
HURRICANES: THEIR NATURE AND IMPACT ON SOCIETY
Homestead, Ken Moore, was on duty during those five hours. He said that he
would not do so again: "Next time, I'm evacuating" (Miami Herald 1992b).
Another Homestead resident also refused to stay through the next one: "It
was terrible. I've never been through a hurricane before <strong>and</strong> I'll never go
through one again. I'm out of here. I'll board up <strong>and</strong> I'm gone" (quoted in
Alvarez 1992a). Although Andrew will not be remembered for the number of
lives that it took, it will be long remembered as a very close call by those
hundreds of thous<strong>and</strong>s of people who lived through it.
1.2.3 Response
Immediately following Andrew's rapid pass over south Florida, infonnation
of damage <strong>and</strong> casualties was difficult to come by. Some in the national media
commented that at first the impacts did not appear as bad as expected, as first
reports indicated that Miami Beach <strong>and</strong> downtown Miami were relatively
intact. "We may have lucked out," said Miami Police Chief Philip Huber
following a tour of Miami Beach immediately after the stonn's exodus (Dewar
1992). Others were less sanguine. An anchor of the NBC Today Show, who
was a fonner Miami resident <strong>and</strong> thus familiar with the area, cautioned the
nation that there had been no reports from the communities south of Miami.
Florida Governor Lawton Chiles announced that "We keep getting reports
that Homestead is hit very, very hard. A certain percentage of it is no more.
We think we're hit awfully hard in South Dade" (quoted in Markowitz 1992).
As infonnation began to filter to the outside world from the center of
Andrew's destructive path, the full magnitude of the stonn's impact became
apparent. In the first hours of the stonn's aftennath, a National Guardsman
described south Dade County in apocalyptic tenns: "This place looks like
ground zero after a nuclear blast -minus the radiation" (Elgiston 1992). A
resident of south Dade County observed that "All it needs are fires <strong>and</strong> this
would be a war zone" (Garcia, Neal <strong>and</strong> Tanfani 1992). Anny Captain
Johnny Dunlap agreed: "It looks like a war zone. It looks like this whole
place has been under fire" (Slevin <strong>and</strong> Greene 1992). Andrew devastated the
south Florida communities of Homestead, Leisure City, Goulds, Princeton,
Naranja, <strong>and</strong> Florida City. For some, the reality of the destruction was
difficult to comprehend. A resident of West Kendall, Miami noted that the
scene through his shattered living room window "looks like what you see on
CNN during a hurricane" (Dewar 1992). Nine hours after l<strong>and</strong>fall, at 2:00 pm
Monday, August 24, President George Bush declared a major disaster in
Florida (FEMA 1993).
In the days following the stonn, Dade County residents flooded neighboring
counties looking for food, water, ice, disposable diapers, film (for insurance
purposes), <strong>and</strong> cash (penn <strong>and</strong> Evans 1992). According to a representative of
Walgreen's drugstore, mobilization of supplies for after the event was extremely
difficult compared to previous experience with Hurricane Hugo in South~