South Florida Marks 23rd Anniversary Of Andrew
SOUTH MIAMI-DADE (CBSMiami) – Hurricane Andrew slammed into Florida on August 24th, 1992.
The storm changed the landscape of South Florida and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people forever.
Hurricane Andrew, a category 5 on the Saffir Simpson scale, roared through the area in the early morning darkness with a howling wind across South Miami-Dade County.
When dawn broke, the light of day revealed unspeakable destruction.
Everywhere, there were odd, confusing images. A jetliner at Miami International Airport, its nose smashed and face down on the tarmac. A fifty foot yacht parked in the middle of a street, blocks from the bay. Cars and trucks tossed about like Tonka toys. A big U-Haul truck somehow came to rest on its back on top of the building where it had been parked.
South Florida lost shopping malls and restaurants. Some churches had roofs ripped off as if the Devil himself had had his way with them. From a helicopter, photographers could record the exposed sanctuaries. In many areas homes were rendered little more than mulch, and others were left with just the walls standing, and not all the walls. Trees, the ones that were not blown down, were denuded, stripped bare with broken limbs contorted; dark, jagged silhouettes against a gray sky. Everything that makes a community was gone with the wind.
Homestead Air Force Base, the jet engine of the South Dade economy, was destroyed. War planes were strewn about the base like cracked pieces from a G.I. Joe set.
Nearly a million customers were left without power.
Thousands of utility workers moved in, seemingly not knowing where to start.
In South Florida, 165,000 homes were destroyed or heavily damaged leaving 250,000 people were permanently homeless.
A billion dollars of agriculture fields were wiped out.
Homestead Air Force Base was also destroyed.
Andrew killed 44 people, 19 directly, and the remainder in post-storm related accidents.
The losses, including the cost of cleanup, approached $30 billion.
