Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 23, 1993 TAG: 9308230307
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TRACY FIELDS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: GOULDS, FLA. LENGTH: Long
It's another 90-degree morning at Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church. The choir sings "Revive Us Again" to the accompaniment of a portable synthesizer organ.
Worshipers wield hand fans, flapping like captive butterflies. Instead of the usual biblical scene or picture of Martin Luther King Jr., the white fans bear the words "Andrew was yesterday. Recovery is today," and a toll-free number for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Since Hurricane Andrew destroyed its sanctuary, Mount Pleasant literally has been a church without walls, gathering every steamy Sunday under a borrowed, off-white tent with rolled-up sides.
The hours of terror and violence, days of deprivation and misery that Hurricane Andrew brought to south Dade County have ended, but the experience is far from over. It's difficult to say when the distress will end for some, and things will never again be exactly as they were before last Aug. 24.
The storm's damage estimates run higher than $30 billion, making it the nation's most costly disaster. The human cost is much greater; as Andrew's survivors watch the Midwest struggle with flooding, they understand.
"We can really feel sympathy and empathy with those folks," said Mount Pleasant's Rev. James Wise. His advice? "Thank God for what's left."
Dade County took the heaviest hit from Andrew. The progress of recovery differs wildly, depending on where you look.
Whole neighborhoods and shopping centers remain gutted, as if the storm had just happened. But elsewhere, generally in more affluent areas, the steady racket and procession of construction workers have brought renewal.
The southern part of the county, once lush, doesn't have much shade now. But the remaining trees have greened, though many still lean west, pointing out the direction of Andrew's powerful wind bursts, which may have been as strong as 200 mph. Many measuring instruments didn't survive the storm.
The legacy of Andrew a year later includes less visible effects, such as a vast tangle of lawsuits by desperate property owners; a drastically revamped insurance system; and frustrated residents who, at a recent town meeting, complained to Gov. Lawton Chiles of neighborhoods overrun by burglars and crooked contractors.
The state attorney's office has reported at least 90 cases of corrupt contractors, with arrests in 84 of the cases. A fraud hot line was opened this month.
Local politicians have revved up efforts to finish work of the most basic type - debris cleanup, replacement of street signs and blocking off unsafe property.
No event so heartened the people of south Dade County as the surprise announcement in June that flattened Homestead Air Force Base, slated for closure, would be resuscitated.
In Florida City - where Andrew blew away all of the city's government buildings, 90 percent of its houses and 65 percent of its tax base - a new $6 million municipal building will include a large room residents can use for meetings and activities. Also, each new public building will include a safe space designed to withstand winds as strong as Andrew's.
And out on the edge of town, they'll break ground Tuesday for a new outlet mall expected to double the city's tax base.
A year ago, Boca Chica Key was a popular spot for boaters in Biscayne National Park. Located in Biscayne Bay east of Homestead, it functioned much like a rest area on the highway, with restrooms and fresh water and historic limestone structures left from 50 years ago when the little island was a playground for millionaires.
Since Andrew, Boca Chica's been closed. "You think about all the things people do to Nature," said park ranger Monica Alvarez. "This time, Hurricane Andrew got us."
"It doesn't seem possible it's been a year," said Ruth Mero, a 22-year-old waitress at the International House of Pancakes in Naranja, one of the first restaurants to reopen after the storm.
She most misses the places she and her friends used to go for fun. Andrew blew away the theaters and ice rink they used to frequent, so now Mero's crowd must travel 15 miles to see a movie.
But she accepts the trip, the increased traffic on the roads and slower traffic in the restaurant, the still-sprouting piles of debris and all the other post-Andrew annoyances - including the possibility that another hurricane could try to wipe South Dade off the map.
"I still like it," she said with a smile. "I'm not gonna leave. This is where I want to live."
\ BY THE NUMBERS\ STATISTICS RELATED TO HURRICANE ANDREW\ \ Estimated population of Homestead, Fla., before Andrew: 30,000.
\ Estimated population of Homestead after Andrew: 18,000.
\ Percentage of mobile homes destroyed, Florida City, Fla.: 100.
\ Insured losses: $15.5 billion.
\ Insured losses after Hurricane Hugo in 1989: $4.2 billion.
\ Traffic signs replaced in Dade County: 150,000 and counting.
\ Number of storm victims who moved elsewhere in Dade County: 44,000.
\ Number of storm victims who left Dade County: 57,000.
by CNB