How I Spent My Hurricane Summer

Figured I would recount my own adventures in the aftermath of Andrew, since that was the most devastating hurricane of all before Katrina.

August 23rd, 1992 - late evening: Had just gotten back from a working cruise to Jamaica; at that time I had a major client who ran cruise ship gift shops. Stepped off the boat with a friend from Belgium and drove home - about a 35 mile drive from the Port of Ft. Lauderdale to extreme South Dade County.

Got home early in the afternoon. Lots of neighbors putting up plywood. I didn't have any precut window covers so I didn't worry about it ("what the hell - I got insurance"). Another client called me early afternoon and insisted that I get his Novell network running immediately, since he had recieved the final hardware needed while I was on my ship. So I drive there and, while putting his network together, he has a staff member run my car out to get the gas tank filled.

Meanwhile, my wife's family is pressing her to retreat with my 1 year old son to their house in western Dade. My wife is also 5 months pregnant at this time. I try to convince her to go to my grandmother's house, which was built by my grandfather - is all CBS construction with steel window blinds and could likely withstand a close nuclear strike - but her family is insistant and I don't fight it; I know she'll feel better being with her family. However, I do send off my 6 year old daughter from a previous marriage to hang out with my grandmother, mother, and aunt. As the crow files, her house is 8 miles or so north-northwest of me in a suburb named "Kendall".

I'm done with the network installation and home by 7PM. My wife leaves for her folks and I'm alone in the house. I watch news briefs and hear about Andrew's effect on the Bahamas. The meteorologists main concern seems to be storm surge. At this time, the storm's track put it on a course for the Dade-Broward county lines which was about 30-35 miles north of my house. So my line of thinking is that my main concern will be flooding but it will be minor as my house is 14 feet abouve sea level.

My house was also only a mile or so from the sea itself. And close enough to Homestead Air Force Base, south of me, that I could see what planes took off and landed daily with a simple pair of binoculars.

I call my father periodically on my cell phone. His house is about a mile and a half northwest of mine in a development built in the 1970's. He's like me - doesn't panic and figures that he can do the most good onsite as the flooding situation develops. My mom has rejected that idea and gone to my grandmothers house and is not very happy with my dad.

I continue to watch the news. A weatherman named Bryan Norcross on channel 4 seems to be the most histrionic about the whole thing and that makes him entertaining to watch. Funny enough, much later, he would be called a hero for being - shall we say - less than reserved before the storm...making him, I guess, some sort of visionary.

Later in the evening, about 9 or 10 o'clock, the weatherfolks change the predicted landfall to south Dade county(!). Yulp! Worse, the draw a line from the sea right to SW 152nd Street as ground zero. This is less than a couple of miles away from me. The winds, by the way, are now swishing back and forth with no real consistant direction.

For perspective: I'm sitting in my living room with curtains open. My house faces roughly north-to-south, meaning the driveway and small front yard are on the north. I have large windows facing north. My house sits on the south side of a cul-de-sac. This is a single-family home development with zero lot lines, very similar to what's called high-density housing in other areas. I'm at the bottom of the "U" in the cul-de-sac but the arms of the "U" stretch no more than 70-80 feet from me and in the center of the "U" is 6 parking slots and a street lamp.

The light of the street lamp is what lets me see what the wind is doing. The fronds from the couple of medium-aged palms in the center of the cul swish back and forth. Still nothing steady in direction or speed of the wind.

My dad calls me on my cell phone. He's decided that with the new landfall estimates and his house's below-sealevel depth, prudence dictates that he relocate with my mother and others to my grandmother's house. He urges me to reconsider not staying. I counter with the fact that I'm somewhat above sealevel and that if I feel in danger, I can always leave. He wishes me luck.

My family room, where all my computer gear was, was in the southwest corner of the house - directly opposed from my living room. I go there and log into AOL (this was pre-'Net, folks) and chat with a few folks about what was going on.

During this time my brother Kevin, who lives in Gainesville, Florida, starts to call. His tone is mixed betweeen concern and awe when I talk about how the wind is picking up and things are getting eerie.

I am also constantly calling my wife at her folks house, and my mother at my grandmothers house, to assure them that everything is fine and not to worry.

At some time after 11 PM, while at the computer in the family room, I notice a green flash. "What the hell?", I think and look through the sliding glass door that looks south onto my small back lawn which is completely covered by a wooden fence. Another green flash.

I start to open the sliding door and notice, for the first time, that it's bulging a bit. When I crack it open, it stops bulging but a gust of wind gets into the house and all my work papers on tables throughout the family room go flying. Oh, well.

I head into my backyard and notice that the wind is now heading from the north at about 50-70 MPH. My house is now a windblock and it's kinda strange to be standing in a dead zone while the wind howls above and to each side. Another green flash to the west, and as I turn to it, I see the brightest one yet only a few hundred yards away and see that it's an electrical transformer exploding with sparks and wires flying. The mystery of the green flashes is solved.

As the wind steadily increases, I call my brother from my cell and tell him about what I see and hear. I hold the phone around the edge of the house so that the wind blows directly into it so that he can hear it. Haha, are we having fun tonight!

Later, large debris starts to fly over my roof and it looks like my backyard is not such a great place to be even if the wind is being largely blocked. So I head back inside and message a few buddies on AOL, after fighting to get the sliding glass door closed. A few minutes later I turn and look and it is seriously bent in. So I crack it a bit, with much effort, and this seems to help.

I head back into the living room and the channel 4 staff is now broadcasting from a storage room, saying that their studio was under threat from a large crane that was tipping towards them. Hmm. Still doesn't seem that bad here; maybe they were wrong on the landfall?

Flicker. Then another flicker and my lights fail. Expected. I had expected this and already had what I called "the world's greatest portable radio" ready in the family room. This radio was a Sony and about the size of a paperback book. It ran forever on 6 AA-batteries and could receive 17-bands. What was really cool about it was that it had a little switch hidden in the battery case where you could change from the US 10-cycle AM bands to Europes 9-cycle bands. This made it a must-carry on my many trips to Europe.

This radio was my 1st anniversary present in 1991 and worked faithfully until it died for no apparent reason in late 2004.

Back to the story: I tune in 610 WIOD AM on my radio. I'm listening to a news guy, named "Chuck" who's been pressed into duty as a talk-show host trying to get a feel from his listeners about what's going on out there in local radioland. I regret that I don't remember Chuck's last name.

Chuck mentions that they've had no callers from south of Cutler Ridge. Well, hell, I'm just south of Cutler Ridge so I call. Apparently there are no call screeners tonight because I get right on with Chuck. He asks me what I see and I start to tell him about the wind and increasing debris flying by when the signal dies.

Doggone! I try to call back and nothing happens. No signal. Phone shows almost no signal strength. Strange. So I decide to get to higher ground, so to speak, and try again. I leave the family room and head upstairs to the master bedroom. At that point my phone rings and it's my brother from Gainesville (I label my brothers because I have 3 and it's how I keep track of 'em in my head).

He asks me how I'm doing. Honestly, things have gotten a lot scarier in the past few minutes and I tell him so. The wind is really howling now. He starts to say something but I lose the signal once again.

At that moment, like a bad kung-fu movie, time actually slows down for me. I'm standing at the foot of my bed. Above the headboard is a window looking south over the backlawn. Three feet to the north of me is the door to the master bathroom. To the west of that is a sliding door to the walk-in closet. To my left (east) is a dresser where sits my radio, stiff drink, and my cigarettes which I all grabbed when I tromped upstairs.

Back to the kung-fu movie: I hear a crash of glass downstairs. I turn and start to move towards the bedroom door. And then I feel a terrific punch to the top of my head and I go down like a collection of ropes. This all took place in a few seconds.

So I find myself lying at the foot of the bed. I grab at the bedcovers and pull them over me from the bed. I notice as I arrange them that there's a lot of blood all over the place and it's mine.

I felt woozy; I reached up and touched the top of my head and there's a huge crease running diagonally and it's seeping blood. I looked over to my feet and see my bathroom door with a goodly part of the supporting wall attached lying there. I figured that it's what hit me; and would later establish that for fact. I also know now that I was unconscious for at least a few minutes but have no way of knowing for how long.

The length and depth of the crease in my head convinced me that I might die. It was a very weird feeling and one hard to put words around. But during this time the wind had gotten through my bedroom window and a 150+ MPH wind was swirling debris through the room and dropping some of it on me.

I grabbed the bottom of the mattress on the bed and pulled it loose from the bed and over me. Now I had shelter, even if bleeding like a stuck pig and concerned about my overall health.

After several minutes, the bleeding stopped but I was aware of voices in the room. After a minute of confusion, I realized that the voices were from the radio - still on the dresser and still working, despite debris being plastered all over the side facing the bedroom window.

The wind had shifted enough to eliminate the use of my bedroom as a windtunnel, so I scurried out crab-like from my mattress fortress and managed to retrieve the radio. I waited a second and then also grabbed my drink and cigarettes.

I lit a cigarette and waited and it seemed as if the wind had died down, except for some swishing sounds. It hit me that this was the eye of the storm and that I had a few minutes of safety before the backside hit.

What to do? Traditionally the backside of a hurricane has worse winds than the front and so I was pretty worried about that. Also, without knowing the storm speed, eyewall size, now precise landfall point - there was no way of knowing how long I had before the winds came back.

I decided that discretion was the better point of valor and quickly made a shelter of my walk-in closet using the mattress I had already copiously bled into as a front shield. No sooner had I made myself comfortable than the winds returned with a vengeance.

Since I was "fortified" I was able to pay more attention to my environment sans immediate survival. The sounds of the wind were incredible. Pucker your lips and put your tongue on the roof of your mouth and blow as hard as you can. That was the prevalent wind sound. Now, repeat with your mouth curved into a smile - this was the sound of those weird gust moments when the whole house would shake and I thought it might all come apart.

(Part Two)

So there I was listening to the sounds of the house and, probably, the neighborhood being torn apart. It wasn't until about 6 in the morning that I felt it was safe to venture out...still a bit groggy and bloody from the bop on the head hours before.

I picked my way out of the bedroom and towards the stairs. Holy crap - the stairs were covered with the contents from my daughter's bedroom, which abutted the stairs. The wind had gotten into her room and torn the back wall off, dumping the contents of her closet on to the stairs. I picked my way down carefully, bleeding and cursing the whole while.

So now I'm back in my living room. Almost every piece of furniture has been pushed against the stairs. Under the stairs was a small 1/2 bathroom, which has been crushed. Ironically, this is the "interior room" that my relatives had urged me all night to seek shelter in. Heh.

I look out of the front door: The entire cul-de-sac is covered by pieces of Spanish barrel tile, which was the roofing material of choice in the area. Not good. I make my way around the inside of the house to the garage.....which seems to be OK. My car, however, looks like it was machinegunned by tile pieces. All the tires are blown and all but one of the windows are blown out. How did this happen? Easy enough to see: My garage door has been peppered by tile pieces that came through and hit the car at 150+ MPH. Ugh.

Heck, the car starts so I lift the garage door and back it out into the cul. Not too worried about the tile because the tires are already blown and I really don't care about the rims at that point. I stoppped in my driveway, because I suddenly remembered that a few of my neighbors hadn't told me what they were going to do during the storm and thought I should check on them.

There was an older lady who lived in a small 1-story house behind my neighbor's house on my immediate right. My neighbor's house - also 1-story - had an east-west facing and took the brunt of the wind and therefore looked like an empty aircraft hanger with a few beams marring the complete open of the interior.

So I clambered through his house and through his backyard to the lady's house, which looked from the rear to be remarkably well-preserved. I knocked on her glass door (intact) and got no answer, so I opened the door and stepped inside. Her family room was completely intact! She had a bunch of porcelain knick-knacks throughout the room and I couldn't see any damage to any of them. I turned to my left and went into her kitchen which was also in good shape. From there, a hallway turned to my left towards the front of the house. Very dark and cluttered...I looked down as I picked my way and came upon a pair of legs sticking out of the clutter.

She was dead. I didn't even try to move the debris off of her and just left the way I'd come. Days later, I figured out that what had happened was that the house across the street from her lost it's second story, which flew over and crushed her and the front of her house - creating the windbreak that had preserved so much of her house.

Directly across from my cul-de-sac was another, with the end point about 100 yards from my house. I don't know why I went to the house directly opposite from mine, but I did. It had a similar layout to mine but the first floor had taken a whacking and there were no stairs left and a lot of glass and rubble. I heard crying upstairs.

I climbed up what was left of the stair railing and got upstairs. Hiding in a closet were a woman and her two young kids. I vaguely knew her to be Turkish and a nice person overall. She was in the closet crying and just wearing panties - it's as if she was totally caught off-guard by what happened and ended up in her closet. Her kids were actually more composed. I convinced them that they had to leave. None of them had shoes and none of them could find any in the wreakage. So I rigged a blanket from the top of the stairs to climb down on. The kids climbed down fine, but the woman was still hysterical and I had to fireman's carry her down the makeshift rope. Once down, I sent the woman's daughter back up to find a shirt for her. After she returned, I led them all carefully to their garage where their Toyota coupe sat undamaged. I got them into the car and the lady's head had cleared enough for them to drive off towards....I dunno where. I never saw them again.

So I traipsed back to my car and decided to drive to my grandmother's house. As I left my neighborhood I passed a police car, moderately damaged, with a dazed looking policeman driving slowly down the avenue.

I got a few blocks down the main road and then the road became unpassable. Upside-down cars, trees, junk, and other crap blocked the road. I went a few more blocks - mainly through people's yards with my already-blown tires, before I realized that the best way forward was down U.S.1, which lay several blocks to the west.

It took me about an hour to navigate my way to the highway. Unless you've been in this situation, it's hard to describe but it's very easy to get lost in areas you've known for years because most landmarks have been twisted or destroyed. So I get to the highway and turn towards the north. A block down the road I pass a Circuit City. The entire front of the store has been torn away and there are TVs and stereos and whatever in boxes strewn across the parking lot and highway.

As I slow to make my way through these boxes, a young black guy flags me down. He needs to get to his sister in Dadeland Lakes - an apartment block not too far from my grandmothers. So I tell him to hop in but there's broken glass all over the passenger's seat so he rips a panel from one of the Circuit City boxes and puts it in the seat and sits on that.

We drive slowly down US 1. I don't remember if he told me his name or not but I do remember that neither of us said anything much. I got to S.W. 112th Street and turned off the highway. I dropped off my passenger who had a few more miles still to walk but he was grateful for the ride, I think. As he got out of the car, he grabbed my arm and said, "you're good folk" and then walked away.

I navigated the 4 or so remaining blocks to my grandmothers. I think the drive took about an hour and a half - normally it would have taken 10-15 minutes. It's now about 9AM.

I knock on the door - no electricity, no doorbells - my father answers and grabs me while chuckling. My mother swoons or otherwise semi-faints. Later, she tells me that from the preliminary reports from the area that she was sure I was dead. My father, of course, always being Mr. Macho figures that no kid of his is going to get killed by a damn storm and acts nonchalant...to this day I don't know if he really felt that way or was relieved and hiding it.

Meanwhile it seems that my parents neighbors and best friends Dave and Barbara also ended up at my grandmothers house. My mother, having recovered, insisted that I go to the hospital for my head injury but I figured it had stopped bleeding and there were folks worse off than me. Now Dave and my father confer and ask me to drive them back to the neghborhood. What the heck, I do and we get there around 11 AM or so. Both of their houses have been inundated with water during the surge and all contents are destroyed.

We slowly make our way back to my grandmothers house - after convincing a guy with a shotgun that we were not in the area to loot.

A (now) comic note. My wife had her brother drive her from her parents house to our house to look for me - all phones were out. She got into the house and saw, in the stairway debris, the head of a giant Iggy doll that was covered with blood (from me, while trying find my way down). She thought it was me buried there and fainted. She eventually recovered (lol).

Later that day I ended up at my in-laws house. There was no electricity and it was sweltering. The houses in South Florida are not built to catch breezes - they're concrete blocks meant to be air-conditioned. Take away the power and they become 100+ degree torture chambers.

With the influx of other family, my wife and I were relegated to sharing a small sofa for the night. I slept fitfully, because of the heat, but slept about 15 hours.

The next two days were spent scavenging. I scavenged a network-sized UPS from my house that allowed my inlaws to have a working lamp and a coffee-maker. I drove with my friend Mike to Boca Raton (70 miles) to buy groceries and candles. We had lunch at a TGI Friday's off of I-95 in Boca and it was the first time I was in air-conditioning, relaxed, and felt normal.

Overall, it wasn't pleasent but we managed to survive; after the 4th or 5th day we got power back and some of the family left to return home so I was able to sleep in a bed!

About a week after the storm, they were saying on TV that all survivors should register with FEMA and the Red Cross at this field off of Kendall Drive. I knew the field; I had worked as a volunteer with disabled kids at the youth center there when I was 16. So I go there and there are several hundred, perhaps thousands, of folks in a multitude of lines.

I get in one line and after an hour was facing a pretty beat-up Red Cross volunteer. She takes down my name and address and where I'm staying now. She offers me a bag full of various food and drink items. I decline. Apparently, she's not used to this response and angrily tries to force me to take the bag! I tell her that I have a car, money, and am handling things OK...she looks at me doubtfully. I then tell her that it's best if she gives that bag to someone who really needs it and that seems to convince her. No thanks, no goodbyes, and I leave the line.

I start to leave but I first ask a guy who looks like some sort of guard or expediter if I should. He asks me if I've been to the FEMA line. Nope. He suggests I go there. I ask why. He says that the government needs to know where folks are and some other stuff. OK....I get in the FEMA line.

Another hour in the grueling So.Fla. heat and I find myself at the FEMA table. They ask me the same questions that the Red Cross did and I answer the same. The FEMA guy then tells me that he's prepared to give me $500 on the spot and put me in for a $10,000 low interest loan. I say "no". He double-takes and asks why. I tell him that I have already been in contact with my insurers and I have no way of knowing now if I'd need FEMA help but I'd rather err on the side of not assuming unnecessary debt. Could I have a name and number just in case? He's really not prepared for this response and doesn't have a name or number. His advice is to just come back through the same lines if I want help in the future. Heh. Begin to think that they could use my database expertise around here.

I will save you from the angst and gruel of 18 months of dealing with insurance companies (our flood carrier went belly-up!) and construction companies. In summary - did we get back everything? Wellll....mostly. To this day, in 2005, there are times I'll go poking about in the garage looking for something and then realizing that I last saw it before Andrew which immediately means it's lost forever.

My wife and I were scrupulously honest on our insurance claims. Occasionally we'd get a bit pissed when the insurer would say we wouldn't get reimbursed for something until we had a receipt (well, then, how do we pay for the replacement!). But, overall, I have to say that the insurers I dealt with definitely put the problems and suffering of their customers before any other consideration.

We get back to our rebuilt home in July, 1993. We have electricity. We don't get gas back until September and don't get cable TV until early 1994. I still remember having my folks over for Thanksgiving, 1993, and wiring up a Rube Goldberg TV antenna so that my Dad and I wouldn't miss the Dolphins-Cowboys game.

Meanwhile.....my neighbors were less than honest on their claims. My neighbor to my right, who's house I traipsed through to find the dead lady, claimed all sorts of artwork lost and a missing grand piano(!). Since the interior of their house was wiped almost clean, they got away with it.

But here's kharma for you: My neighbor bought a very sophisticated satellite TV system. After a few months, the reconstituted homeowners association forced him to take it down. He spent thousands on attorney's fees fighting them, and then ended up selling his equipment for pennies on the dollar. Their other large investment, so to speak, was the ... ummm.... decollatage of the female of the house. Breast enhancement. I guess that boost of confidence was what she needed because she started coming home late and got a biker boyfriend, and their marriage ended in divorce within a couple of years. Sadly, their daughter (who was best friends with my eldest), died in a crash at the age of 17. Ironically, this brought them back together and I think they're remarried at this time.

When all was said and done, my family recovered without a single penny from the government, although the IRS did allow some unavoidable tax write-offs. This is my moral foundation for criticism of the way the Katrina crisis is handled. I think it's a strong one, and one not too many of you can challenge.