Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 21, 1993 TAG: 9302210041
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Associated Press
DATELINE: PERRINE, FLA. LENGTH: Long
FLORIDA RECOVERY BOGS DOWN UNDER PROBLEMS
At the age of 82, retiree W.R. Peters labors eight hours a day, seven days a week at the full-time job he's had for six months - rebuilding and recovering from Hurricane Andrew.He's gotten a contractor to replace his roof, hauled away countless wheelbarrows of debris that included four pounds of broken glass in his bathtub, sliced up and torn out his waterlogged carpet, and propped up the handful of trees still living among the nearly 80 knocked down.
When resting from those physical chores, he catalogs the losses of his private library, where 52 rare books were ruined, including first editions of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "A Farewell to Arms." He still can't figure out how to reach an insurance estimate on some of them.
And no price can be placed on the decades-old photos, now water-stained and curled, tracing his travels as a Pan American World Airways pilot and chronicling experiences such as being caught in 1940s' hurricanes.
"The hurricane takes most of my time," Peters said. "It's physical work, it's phoning, it's asking, it's negotiating, it's going out and driving. It seems like it will never get done."
Six months after the shocking display of Hurricane Andrew's destructive fury across Dade County, there are scenes startling for the lack of progress they show since the initial, military-aided cleanup.
In many neighborhoods, twisted metal, shards of glass, tar paper and warped tiles sit in piles. Along little-traveled roads on south Dade's western fringes, minidumps of construction debris sprout overnight like motley mushrooms. Some strip shopping centers still sit idle, blown-out windows unreplaced; and entire blocks of damaged homes are vacant.
"It's disappointing that we're not further along," said U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch, a freshman Democrat who held town meetings on the hurricane this month. "It's just a quagmire. People don't know what to do. Everybody's finger-pointing."
In south Florida's tradition of topical T-shirts, a new one has taken its place: "Forget Hurricane Andrew. It's the Recovery That's Killing Me."
In the first days after Andrew slashed through Aug. 24, nearly everyone had a gripping tale of survival - huddling in closets or bathtubs as ceilings collapsed and windows blew out, digging out from under fallen trees and utility poles, fighting deadlocked traffic and hours-long lines for food and water.
Nearly everyone now has a horror story about being ripped off by contractors, ill-treated by insurance adjusters, infuriated by workers or tangled up in bureaucracy.
"I have a great anger and a towering rage against all forms of government," Redlands resident Pete Button railed at government officials at a town meeting there. "I've had it with all you people!"
Button stormed out, saying he had examples of Andrew-related shortcomings by every level of government, from bureaucracy-misplaced loan applications to bills penalizing him for not paying fees due in the first days after the hurricane.
"We're the losers! Our lives are ruined!" one woman shouted at a consumer advocate's session in Naranja Lakes for people who belatedly found out they have "insurance gaps" that don't come close to allowing them to rebuild from storm damage.
Part of the problem is obvious - the enormity of the devastation of the nation's costliest disaster. Andrew-inflicted damages are estimated at $20 billion. The storm destroyed 25,000 homes and initially forced about 250,000 people out of 78,000 badly damaged homes. Nearly 8,000 businesses and 120,000 jobs were lost at least temporarily, taking as much as 20 percent of Dade County's tax base.
Other effects are more subtle and complex, from glacial government movement to lack of decision-making to quick-buck scammers floating through in Andrew's wake.
Some examples:
Only about one-fourth of $8 billion in federal aid approved by then-President Bush actually has gotten here. The post-election transition and the revamping of federal bureaucracy under President Clinton are blamed. Florida legislators are wrangling over how to allot hundreds of millions in state relief.
County officials are deluged with complaints about poor workmanship and flat-out fraud. Ana Vasquez said the steady stream of people into her South Dade Government Center office complain of contractors who took cash deposits and skipped, or new ceilings and walls that tumbled down after the first heavy rain.
The fate of hurricane-razed Homestead Air Force Base, an economic and social linchpin of the town of Homestead, remains unknown. Business leaders last month formed a group to lobby for restoration, and Clinton promised in his first town meeting to see that the base comes back at least as a joint military-civilian operation. But little action is expected before this summer, when a Pentagon base-closing commission makes its recommendations.
We Will Rebuild, an ambitious private coalition formed to coordinate recovery, and a builders' group recently opened a resource center to link contractors with workers and training resources and oversee donated supplies. But shortages remain of both materials and qualified contractors and workers. Many out-of-state contractors have been deterred by licensing morasses and the lack of accommodations for those willing to relocate.
Building codes and enforcement are being toughened in an effort to prevent the sloppiness that worsened storm damage in some developments.
And Congress still must have hearings on legislation to modify rules that would force homeowners whose houses were more than half-ruined to completely rebuild at higher elevation.
Some 5,000 homes may be caught in the "50-percent rule," and thousands more of these homeowners' neighbors are reluctant to begin major rebuilding until they know the future shape of their neighborhoods.
"What do you do? People like us, who have invested all of our savings don't know because the other owners aren't doing anything," said Ingrid Muensterer, a Canadian citizen who returned this winter to find the seven houses she and her husband own stripped by burglars and overrun by rats. Their Sea Pines neighborhood is a virtual ghost town.