Hurricane Andrew (This is long and detailed) *PC*

Ok, don't ask me why I decided to write this almost 15 years after Andrew, but I suddenly had the urge to document what happened that night to me and my family, and what better place to do it but here right? Soooo.... Here we go boys and girls...

To give you a rough idea of how truely horrible this storm was...

Give you a clue? Ok, enough of the already known knowledge.... lets move on to what happened to me, shall we?

I was 8 years old in 1992 living in a great place called Homestead, Fl. I went to West Homestead Elementary School, and lived with my mom in a nice 2 bedroom apartment that was on the Homestead side of the divider between Homestead and Florida City. I had to go to a different city to get Taco Bell. It was horrible to walk that block, LoL. Anyway... we had been watching the news as we did every hurricane season (Roughly June to November) and we were watching this storm called Andrew. He was big... he was bad... and he was supposed to keep veering north and hit the Fort Lauderdale area.

But instead... Andrew decided to change his direction, and speed, on the 22nd of August. If you notice where it turns from yellow to red... thats the 22nd of August... and thats the day that all hell broke loose in Homestead.

Normally, people who are used to hurricanes and have been hit by them know, you have WEEKS to prepare. And everyone thought that Andrew was going to hit Fort Lauderdale, so no one in Homestead prepared. No boarding of windows, no supplies, nothing. So when Andrew turned on the 22nd, my mother and I walked ot the little gas station on the corner, bought a bunch of bags of chips, every gallon of water they had, a bunch of other snack type things, and we hoofed it to my grandparents house. Well, we drove to my grandparents house. My mother packed one suitcase, with clothes for both of us, my cabbage patch doll, and her first aid kit. Everything else was left where it was.

My grandparents lived a couple blocks away from the Homestead Air Force Base, which is where my grandpa worked. He was a mechanic there. Anyway... My grandparents had just moved into this house maybe a year before, and the adults (remember, I'm 8) were all confident that with the newer constuction that house would withstand the catagory 4 hurricane speeding toward us.

Time for another science lesson. For those of you who dont know about the catagories of Hurricanes, let me explain. Its all about wind speed. The higher the wind speed, the higher the catagory. In other words The higher the catagory... the higher the wind... the higher the damage. It was argued for MANY MANY years after Andrew about whether he was a 4 or a 5. Finally, I think about 5-6 years later, the national weather association told us what we Homestead survivors already knew. Andrew was a 5. As a matter of fact (and this is fact) the highest wind speed Andrew clocked.... 182 MPH. Moving on...

We ended up at my grandparents house, propped a twin size matress (it was in the room I slept in when I visited) in the bathtub, to hold the ceiling up, and settled in for the night. I ended up sleeping in my grandmothers bedroom, because she and my mother were watching the news as Andrew crept closer and closer to us. I remember I fell asleep wondering if I would wake up. This was the night of the 23rd, leading into the early morning hours of the 24th.

The next thing I remember is my mother waking me up, grabbing both me and Alesha Fey (my cabbage patch kid) and running out of my grandmothers room. The first thing I heard was the wind.... it howled. To this day I hate the sound of howling wind. I asked my mother, "Is that Andrew?" She said yes and rushed from the room. We were litterly about 5 steps out the door when this LOUD crash sounded behind us. She spun to look in the room I was just asleep in... and the support beam for the ceiling had fell and had landed across the indent my body had made in the bed. 5 steps. Even at 8 years old, I knew I had brushed death.

My mother took me into the living room where my grandmother was standing, ready to rush down the hallway. "What happened?" My mother just shook her head and sat with me on the couch because I had started crying. Once I was calm, I started watching the TV (we still had power and TV at this point) and I remember watching Andrew. He was huge. The rain had started, and suddenly (I apologize now, but please remember, this is an 8yr olds memory, and to those of us who surivived this storm, the term it happened so fast seriously applies)this rush of rain came pouring through our front door. My mother ran to get my grandfather, and he came out of his bedroom and him and my mom started putting bags around the seals of the door to stop the water. We all sat in the living room, and I think maybe a half hour had passed when a loud crash came from my grandfathers room. Upon opening the door we realized he now had that skylight he always wanted (his words, not mine). My grandfathers room was toast. Thats 2 rooms down in a three bedroom house.

We all sat back in the living room after moving our supplies into the bathroom with the matress in it. By the way... cause I forgot to mention it... we had 5 chihuahuas. They will come into play later. At this point, they are all in the bathroom so we wouldnt have to hunt for them later. We all keep watching the news when suddenly the TV goes to static, there is this moment that all of us look at each other right before my mother and grandfather (who were sitting on opposite sides of the room) lift their arms to catch the ceiling that decided it wanted to drop on all of us. The wind starting ripping though my living room, and we had a fan with metal blades on it. I remember watching those blades slice into my grandfathers arms as my grandmother grabbed me, and ran to the bathroom, closely followed by my mom and grandpa. We shut the door... and we waited. My grandmother was sitting on the counter, my mother on the toilet, and my grandfather was on the floor. Where was I? In the bathtub, which was full of blankets and a matress, with 5 dogs and a cabbage patch kid.

It seemed like hours we sat in that bathroom, until all of a sudden, it was quiet. Ready for your next science lesson?

The eye of the storm. The eye of a hurricane is completely utterly calm. However, the eye wall of a hurricane is the deadliest part of the storm. It is comprised of nothing but highly condensed thunderstorms, which anyone who lives in florida will tell you, means you will probably end up with.... Tornados. Back to the story!

When the eye settled overhead we decided to get out of the bathroom, stretch our legs, and let the dogs go to the bathroom for the little calm time we had. We also wanted to see how much damage had been done. In a word.... Enough. To keep it short and sweet... my mothers car had a tree thru it. Half of our house was gone. Most of my neighbors houses were gone, and our shed was gone. Funny part about that... the walls and roof of the shed, GONE. Everything in the shed, including an empty styrofoam cooler.... still sitting there. Exactly the way it was if the shed had walls. Now... here was my one big mistake of Andrew. I looked up at the sky, and looked at the eye wall. Turning in a circle, I counted 13 funnel clouds. Aka... Tornados. Yeah.... like I wasnt scared enough already?

We went back inside, and we rode out the rest of the storm. It was a lot like the first half of the storm, so I am not going to go into major detail.

By the end of the storm... we were scared, we were tired, and our entire lives had been taken from us. We climbed (yes, Climbed)out of what was left of our house, blinked in the morning sun, and tried to figure out what we were supposed to do next. Ladies and Gentlemen... when I say I have seen Hell... I have. Nothing that happens to me will ever be as bad as that day in 1992. Nothing. And maybe one day I will continue to write about Andrew, and the weeks that followed. But for now... I think this is enough.

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