Hurricane Ian

[ApS]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-Cuba-NHC.html

Originally Posted by Newbiesaukee

I wish I could feel more philosophic about this, but we lost our home and almost all our possessions in Andrew. Andrew was a very rapidly moving relatively small hurricane and produced relatively little flooding or storm surge. It was a short lived severe (Cat 5) wind event rather than a water event. I think Ian has the potential for much more destruction for many more people.

Coral Gables was notable for perhaps a hundred uprooted tropical Banyan trees, whose upturned roots reached 60-feet into the sky.

I lived only three miles south of Coral Gables in South Miami. Damage from downed trees meant traffic was mostly at a standstill. Local folks moved windblown debris, so pathways were made for cars and trucks.

My screened porch had the aluminum structure crumpled. That porch was my temporary workplace for restoring a 1960 four-passenger convertibIe. It received nary a scratch!

I was in Wolfeboro at the time, and arrived back in South Miami on the very hour that electricity was restored...Restoring electricity took two weeks!

Neighbors in our little neighborhood pooled resources and had rotating communal BBQs every evening.

Those who experienced Hurricane Andrew have many true stories of the devastation. It was later calculated that Hurricane Andrew had 500 embedded tornadoes!

One wooden sign, designating Fairchild Gardens was retrieved from an airport eight miles away! One reinforced-concrete sill blew off a suburban home's roof, flew over to a neighbor's house, and killed a woman in her kitchen! My late optometrist and skilled race car driver, "Shelly" Dobkin, had his Piper Seminole aircraft break its moorings, and sailed into the woods surrounding the airport. My CPA and her son searched for their lost dog, and after several leads by distant residents, finally found it! Expressing their gratitude, they turned around, and realized they were hopelessly lost. No street signs remained to guide them back home!

Sixty-five people died in Hurricane Andrew.

The accounts go on and on. The only good thing to come out of Hurricane Andrew was a major revision of building codes, which have since been adopted by many counties. Prior building codes were constantly being subverted by the scores of disreputable contractors who built Dade County's hurricane-vulnerable suburban sprawl. I expect the same subversion is going on right now.

And, oh yes, more people will die because of this "wet" hurricane, and the refusal to believe a storm could be so destructive. When told by Sheriffs to evacuate before the bridges were raised, they said they'd "ride it out".

Originally Posted by Susie Cougar

I live in Parrish, Florida which is about 10 miles inland from the Sarasota and Bradenton area. I had my hurricane shutters put up yesterday and I am staying in a hotel just north of Tampa. I hated being at home during hurricane Irma, five years ago, because once your shutters are up it is completely dark and then you lose your power And it’s just terrible. You can’t see what’s going on outside. I couldn’t figure out how to use my radio so I didn’t know what was happening. The ironic thing is that we have a contract on our house and we are supposed to close in a few weeks; everything is very nerve-racking.

I had to wait until Hurricane Ian passed you by before I could tell of my tour of southern Dade County. I waited two weeks before going down there. As bad as we had it north of there, it was ten-times worse further south. At least we had street signs!

I drove by a distant landmark, a Holiday Inn. It had four or five floors, but what was remarkable, it no longer had walls. (!) You could see the distant skies directly through the entire building!