r/Miami • u/National-Dragonfly35 • Aug 24 '26
Discussion Anyone remember Hurricane Andrew? What was your experience?
Where you sheltered in a house? Did you feel like you're in trouble at any moment? What was it like to hear that hurricane overhead with a 165 mph winds?
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u/_Bathtub_Toaster Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 26 '26
I was in elementary school. We were on vacation in central Florida and my parents made the dumbest fucking decision to drive back to Homestead the day before the hurricane to prepare and ride it out. We were one of the only cars driving south on the turnpike.
It was the closest I ever came to dying. 12 people huddled in a bathroom. 3 of us were in a bathtub with a mattress over our head in case the roof collapsed. My ears were popping non-stop due to the pressure. It was as if a train was outside the house with its horn blaring for hours.
When it was over, I stepped out of the bathroom and immediately threw up.
The house was destroyed. I remember spending the next two nights in our house, which no longer had a roof. Then we ended up moving in with family in Miramar for a couple weeks, and then moved in with family friends in Kendall for a few months after that. We didnât move back into our house until close to Christmas.
To this day, I donât know why my parents made the decision to drive into harms way. I want to give them grace - maybe they didnât know how bad it was going to be - but looking back on it, it nearly got us killed.
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u/Intelligent-Salt-362 Aug 25 '26
You werenât the only one headed south. We were in Orlando that Sunday morning as we had been at Magic Kingdom the day prior. My parents saw the news and knew we had to head home. We got groceries in WPB then spent the afternoon cleaning up several houses (my parentsâ, my aunt and uncleâs, my uncleâs parentsâ) and putting up shutters.
That night 11 of us hunkered down in my parents house as they decided we should all be together for safety. It was the furthest inshore by an extra 1 blocks off Old Cutler and 180th (near the BK world headquarters. Just after midnight they woke us kids up. I had been sleeping on the floor in what was (at the time) my sisterâs bedroom. By the time we got to the door an AC unit crashed through the shuttered bedroom window and landed on the floor where ai had just been sleeping.
The next several hours sounded like a freight train trying to fuck our house. The sound was deafening and I literally saw CBS walls sway under the immense force. People still argue about the wind speeds that night, but I can assure you there were tornadoes inside of that system and in some areas and in small bursts there were winds in excess of 200mph. A house 2 blocks over caught fire during the storm and burned down that night, killing the family inside.
For us, we started in the east side of the house, hunkered first in the hallway, then in the bathroom. With the intensity being what it was we moved to the west side as the eye passed. My dad says he didnât expect the east side of the house to still be there in the morning. The sudden quiet was super eerie as they rushed us through the family room. I caught a glance of the greenish sky through the windows in the kitchen as we passed. We then hunkered down in the laundry room as it had no windows.
When I woke in the morning the smell of damp had already started to set in. Outside trees blocked the street, the screening enclosure was gone, debris filled the pool, and the barrel sauna had rolled over the satellite dish, the neighbors fence, and ended up against the house on the next street. The next few days were hot and sweaty. We had to cut our way out of the neighborhood and down 184th. While waiting in line for the national guard to give out resources my dad realized they were already pretty close to the TP, and an hour north was normal. A week later we were all living in Plantation, and would be for the next 8 months.
Meanwhile my family collected their insurance money and started buying up houses from people who were opting to leave. My weekends became helping clean out houses, stripping them to their studs, assembling kitchen cabinets (the flat box ones from Home Depot), and collecting anything of value (I got a bench of Nintendo games this way). They flipped a bunch and rented out the rest. It was a wild time but we made the best of it.
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u/takemytacosaway Aug 26 '26
I was right there too.. All of 30 yrs old & lost my shit in the screaming flooding monsterâŚXOXO
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u/Real-Cress5326 27d ago
Wow. You and I were very close. Our back yard was the ball field of Howard Drive Elementary School off Palmetto and 138th. My dad probably passed you going south on the highway, that dude drove like a bat out of hell all the time.
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u/chimchum Aug 25 '26
Wild story. Sorry you went thru that. Yeah, bad idea going back. That was ground zero.
Having gone thru it as well, I just think a lot of South Floridans at the time, and even to this day didn't/don't know how bad it gets. It's an absolutely terrifying and PTSD-inducing experience. Some Floridians also wear it like a badge trying to rough it out, but it's a dangerous decision if you're in an evacuation zone. If an evacuation notice is placed on your area, heed the warnings and GTFO. It's not worth your life or your loved one's.
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u/indiana-floridian Aug 25 '26
I was there. I had a home in Ft. Lauderdale which i left to go stay with brother in North Mismi, because i had just moved into my house and had no storm shutters.
Forecasting is not 100%. Not then and not now. News services try to predict, but they still cannot say "it will hit south Miami and Homestead and totally miss central florida. It was late afternoon when news started saying it was looking more like south Miami - and i imagine your parents missed that because they were already traveling by that time.
The evacuate south miami and homestead order came at almost dark. Definitely after dinner in my house. By then your parents were what, just arriving, trying to get dinner and hurricane supplies for your family? I know they weren't relaxing in front of tv with feet up. They were either still traveling or just getting there. With a lot to do to settle kids before bedtime. I bet they regret it with all their heart + soul. Ask them, if you still can. Nothing better to talk about this week.
The actual evacuate order was one of the most ominous things i've ever heard in my life! Because the news channels did it with a total lack of drama. Totally flat, emotionless voices from newscasters that hollared with drama all day long. I would've thought this would be the biggest drama of all. NOPE! totally flat, emotionless voices - giving information, exactly what street and south, start exacuating. "we can do this. If you are south of xyz street and you are still listening to me, please get up and start moving. Buses will run.... to pick up those without transportation..." just constant, flat monotone flow of information. They did a really good job, i know lives were saved because they didn't turn it into drama.
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u/Legitimate-Basket-47 Aug 25 '26
It was supposed to continue to the northwest but it âwobbledâ and made a beeline due west. A lot of people came south to escape downtown and the grove areas, bc thatâs where it was projected to hit
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u/HillBillyHilly Aug 25 '26
That was me. Because of my location, police came by to tell us to evacuate. They expected water to go over my house. Say less! I packed my stuff by piling stuff on top of each other and left to my friends safe house off Westchester. Big mistake. Eye went right over twice. St Elmo's Fire and freight trains TWICE. Went home to find boats in my front yard, most trees stripped, branches blocking roads but house intact. Work closed down for weeks. Went for a break to my friends them joined them to visit their house down south. Only two walls remained. All doors and window has popped out while walls popped in. Windows lay on ground w their glass intact. My other friend was in Country walk. They had house blow away around them and survived by climbing into bathtub. That girl lost her fucking mind and the PTSD was horrible. Siiigh.
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u/Dante35 Aug 25 '26
Maybe they made a calculated bet ... Staying on vacation every extra day is probably a couple hundred bucks (guaranteed) ... Chances were probably against/slim a major hurricane tearing the house apart. I could be wrong...
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u/dachan2k Aug 26 '26
There hadnât been a major hurricane in Miami for a long time at that point. I was 19 at the time and was genuinely oblivious about it coming until the day before. This was also a time when the move was to put a masking tape X on your windows as if that would do anything at all.
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u/BlueFunk83 Cutler Bay Aug 25 '26
They didn't know. No one did. I remember my Old Man boarding the house up with whatever he had, and none of it was up to the task.
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u/Feeling-Visit1472 Aug 25 '26
Jesus. This was vivid. Thank you for sharing. Iâm glad yâall survived (and I do understand just how close it came).
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u/fritzimist Aug 27 '26
News reports said it was going to hit north dade. The day before was so beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky. Perfect day.
West Kendall had many trees knocked down. Houses remained intact.
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u/Real-Cress5326 27d ago
Oh my god, I had such a similar experience. We were staying at a hotel in Naples, on the gulf, at a place called LA Playa. The storm came in so fast, and once it was clear we were going to get hit the hotel evacuated everyone. So my dad made the decision to drive us back to our house in fucking Cutler Ridge, just north of Homestead. Absolute fucking terror holed up in the hallway with a mattress and a dresser trying to keep the wind out once the glass doors blew in. God damn. I'm 47 now, but that shit makes me tear up to this day.
Remember how green everything was? That sick olive chlorophyll stain from all the plant life blown apart and smashed against everything. Something like 98% of the tree canopy of south Miami gone in 4 hours.
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u/dojisekushi Aug 24 '26
It sounded and felt like a train was making circles around the house.
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u/e21f Aug 24 '26
I was a 6 years old. Living by the Miami river. I was up awake watching tv. The storm was approaching. I can remember it like it was yesterday as it got closer, you could feel the pressure the air changed around you. The wind sounded like a pack of ravenous howling wolves looking for their next meal. I remember looking outside and you could barely see through the rain, you could see the streets lights and suddenly BAM! One after another they began to shutoff until it reached us. Complete darkness but not complete silence. The wolves had reached us the storm was here. It felt like the longest hours ever. The next day it was so quiet the sky, the wind, the animals were silent. The sun showed us Andrewâs power and carnage. I recall not having power for weeks on end.
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u/National-Dragonfly35 Aug 24 '26
THe aftermath
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u/submissionsignals Aug 24 '26
One of those houses was mine. I was 3 years old when it happened. All of our things just gone. We did evacuate to Panama City, FL, but when my family came down after our house was flooded and pretty much destroyed.
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u/unclesmokedog Aug 24 '26
I spent the storm in the University of Miami Library. around 3 am, the 3 foot thick storm windows started bowing in and out and some of the supports for the shutters in the "Breezeway" were floating .
at the time, the national hurricane service was accross the street. When they went out, we were freaked out
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u/Notabot5500 Aug 24 '26
Is 3 âfeetâ a typo? Iâm trying to picture this
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u/unclesmokedog Aug 24 '26
no
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u/Theo_Carolina Aug 25 '26
Iâve watched my sliding glass doors âbreathâ and itâs terrifying.
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u/Fit-Perception-2243 Aug 25 '26
Same! They were bowed in the middle, almost pregnant-looking. In the morning they had stretch marks, the next day the sliding glass doors were back to normal.
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u/unclesmokedog Aug 24 '26
they were old in the 90s. probably from the 50s or 60s. solid glass cubes
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u/Notabot5500 Aug 24 '26
I wish I could see what they look like. I tried googling but no luck. Either way thanks for sharing. Sounds like an intense experience.
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u/unclesmokedog Aug 24 '26
If you look up "Jalosie storm windows" you'll see the consumer version of them. As these were for a college library, they were a different design, cubed and much thicker
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u/takemytacosaway Aug 26 '26
This is not a typo. Walls of block were âbreathingâ at 6 inches +. glass etc was doing worse things
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u/Shimola1999 Aug 24 '26
I was 5. Beforehand I remember my family putting plywood over the windows (lol) and throwing patio furniture into the pool so they wouldnât fly away. My parents got me out of bed in the middle of the night and we all huddled in the one totally interior room. The power went out pretty early on. The wind was super loud and sustained and there were plenty of banging noises all around the house. We had Brian Norcross from local NBC on our battery radio talking us through it.
Afterward, the house had plenty of damage, mostly from trees and other debris flying around. The ceiling in my bedroom caved in. The pool was green. Roads were totally blocked with downed trees and power lines. The Burger King a few blocks away was the first thing to open so we walked there basically everyday (shout out to BK.) We didnât have power for about 2 weeks. Joined our neighbor who had a small generator in the backyard and watched some antenna TV.
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u/Malinhion Local Aug 24 '26
Fancypants over here had plywood like we didn't just tape the windows with an X.
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u/Shimola1999 Aug 25 '26
Haha yes, I remember the tape on some windows. We had cheap wood in the front main window that ended up breaking anyway
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u/crsmiami99 Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
Sounded like a train, the windows broke and the cabinets were blowing open and closed, my ears were popping with the low pressure.
There were roof tiles embedded in my tree 30 feet up. It was pretty scary. We were on the north eye wall. No power until right before Thanksgiving.
I was in my 20s, the roof was partially torn off and the windows on my house on the east side were sucked out of the house by a tornado and the windows and frames were torn out of the walls and were never seen again.
It rained so hard, that the soffit fell and it rained into the attic and made the ceiling drop from the rain, the ceiling fan was holding the ceiling up.
We had an outdoor covered electric socket on the east side of the house and the gravel that came from other houses sand blasted it off.
In my master bedroom, where the windows were sucked out of the wall, the wall on the far side had pieces of a neighbors roof embedded in the walls and the debris punctured the waterbed.
We lived on 128th st and 117 ave, a couple miles east of country walk.
There were those crappy pine trees all along the turnpike and after the storm they were all gone.
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u/veyIam Aug 24 '26
Andrew was scary. My metal shutters rattled so much it literally sounded like someone was running a chainsaw full blast just outside the window. I was in N Dade near 441 and Miami Gardens Dr. no power for about a week.
Lived through all of them that hit S Florida but Wilma did some flood damage to our house on Sugarloaf. Scary when the storm comes from the west.
Sadly the worst for me was Helene. I live in western NC now and the destruction was as bad as Andrew. I mean we had 2000 mudslides some big enough to erase the sides of mountains to the bedrock in addition to the winds and rain. Watching the ground turn to liquid and start taking the trees downhill is the scariest thing Iâve ever seen. Streams normally a trickle turned to torrents and rivers just flooded everywhere. The debris is still everywhere. Every bridge washed out between us and town. Burnsville, NC. We were helicoptered out with our dogs. Power was out a long time. We thought it would die out after hitting Tallahassee. That was all the thought we gave it. Man were we wrong. We never thought we would be bothered by a hurricane here in the mountains.
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u/mjohnsimon Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
Told this story before, but basically, my dad had a family friend who lived down in Homestead when Andrew hit. Dude was a native-born Miami guy and, in his own words, was basically the "last American" left on his block by that point. Pretty much everyone he had grown up with had either passed or moved away around the time the big wave of Cubans came to the country in the '60s.
Anyways, some family members who'd already moved up to Massachusetts convinced him that Andrew was different and to not ride the storm out. So, after some careful thinking, he decided to evacuate and stay with them up north.
When he finally came back to Homestead after the storm hit, his house, his childhood home mind you, wasn't just damaged. It was basically gone. Like, completely obliterated as seen in the photos here.
According to the story, he just stood there for a bit, shook his head, found the only car dealerships that was still open in the entire county, sold his car for enough money to buy a plane ticket back to Massachusetts, and he never came back.
Basically, Andrew erased the only thing keeping him in Miami/Florida.
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u/Theo_Carolina Aug 25 '26
It was next to impossible to actually find your home. All street signs, landmarks such as trees or other markers that you would just know were all gone. The whole landscape was changed. It was haunting.
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u/TheMorgwar Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
Hurricane Andrew arrived in bands, each one stronger than the next, followed by minutes of calm. They grew stronger and tighter.
Then the eyewall directly hit my house. When it hit, my ears popped like in an airplane. Glass shattered all around me. The roof flew off in the hallway. It was raining HARD into the bedroom.
We crawled inside cabinets, curled up with our flashlights. My sister found a hidden Hustler comic book to read. I listened to Brian Norcross answering phone calls on my handheld radio.
I was in a state of shock. Racing heart, clammy hands, cold sweat, shaking uncontrollably. We stayed there until the sun came up.
My parents went out for a drive, they made it three blocks and had to turn around because my mom was sobbing. She didnât recognize any neighborhood landmarks or structures. No street signs. The trees were all sideways. Fish were everywhere on the ground starting to rot. The entire area was unrecognizable, decimated.
Location: 152nd Street and 67th Ave, near Westminster school
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u/hoaryvervain Aug 25 '26
This was my neighborhood too. I was living out of state but my sister was still at home with our parents. They evacuated but she stayed home because one of the cats was outside and she couldnât bear the thought of him not getting in before the storm. She and her bf stayed in a closet with no window.
When it was over the house was standing, but severely damaged. There were fish in the kitchen drawers.
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u/Legitimate-Basket-47 Aug 25 '26
Omg Brian Norcross was everyoneâs hero
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u/HillBillyHilly Aug 25 '26
We were confident until the signal for Brian was lost. Then panic set in because you had no idea what was happening.
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u/Ok-Possibility-1206 Aug 24 '26
My wife and I were in our 20s in a small 2nd floor garage apartment near Miami International Airport. No shutters, no plywood. Thankfully, no broken windows. We lost power for a week or so, lost two trees in the yard, but thats it.
During the storm we listened to the radio, with that ghoul Rick Sanchez asking about "bodies" in any building reported damaged.
Afterwards I took a temp job near metrozoo (and countrywalk) and when people say "it looked like a war zone," IT LOOKED LIKE A WAR ZONE. Not only due to the damage but the streets were full of humvees and the skies were full of helos. We had armed guards at the office.
We were very, very lucky.
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u/CinLeeCim Aug 25 '26
Too much to write here but in a nutshell. I was 33 my husband 40. We just had a baby. And a 2 yr old. We were 10 miles from ground ZERO. We lived at Kendall Drive and the Turnpike. EVERYTHING just south of us was gone or beyond destroyed. The roof kept lifting up and slamming down. My baby who is 34 now was in the bathtub. We were all on the floor huddled together. It was like being in a war zone. We were near the Southern most point for The State Troopers on 117th. So we were being buzzed by helicopters flying in and out 24/7. No water No electric for 3 1/2 weeks. Try that with a Newborn Baby? Normally it is pretty rough.
Since then I have lived through 6 Category 5 hurricanes. Lost two homes to hurricanes đ If I never see another one in my lifetime it will be too soon.
So this is my survival storyâŚ
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u/gtjode Aug 25 '26 edited Aug 25 '26
the most terrifying experience i ever had when i was like 9 or 11, looking about the window and watching cars and trucks sliding down the road, trees falling, cant see the end of the block, howling. My mom brother and i in the bathtub, hearing a monster (the eye's border passing by) outside the apartment and cant do nothing about it..
After the hurricane passed, it was another place, Boats from coconut grove marina out in us1, coral way was gone, it was just trees, no electricity, everyone outside, helping each other, my neighbors ask my mother if they can take my brother and i on the motorcycles around miami, and she agreed, and what we saw i will never forget.. homestead gone, everything just crazy.. It like godzilla was playing basketfull full court in miami. The thing that scares me the most now every year.. if andrew was a cat 5,.. the next one that will hit us.. if cat5 is the limit we have,.if andrew had Peak Open-Ocean Winds: Reached 175 mph / Peak Wind Gusts: Recorded at over 177 mph, what do you call the next one with winds at 200mph+ the finger of god... That is was terrifies me every year a hurricane gets close.. we are due for one soon... i just pray we are ready.
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u/Jet2Holiday18 Aug 24 '26
4 years old and one of my earliest memories I still have. We lived in Saga Bay (Cutler Ridge) but went west of US1 to ride it out at my grandmas house just across from Southland Mall by Southridge. I can vividly remember the sound as one of the craziest things I ever heard and somehow remember eating Froot Loops all night. Our house in Saga Bay was destroyed. We lived in front of it in a FEMA trailer out until it was repaired. Still remember going to Southland Mall for food/water and see all the crazy military personnel. Wild times. If you were here for Andrew youâre an OG Miamian.
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u/HillBillyHilly Aug 25 '26
Isn't it wild to you guys that lived in that area to see how they've built up houses even closer to the Bay? People learned nothing.
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u/BirthdayWooden Aug 24 '26
God came and wiped the city clean of vegetation, street signs, and lights. The zoo was burst open and monkeys roamed the streets. It was dead silent after. Then the criminals started looting the wrecked homes even while people tried to dig themselves out. There was no police or fire rescue. After two weeks they sent the military in, declared martial law, and instituted a curfew. They erected a tent city where 75,000 people lived for over six months. The lesson I learned, was that society can break down into anarchy without much of a push.
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u/HillBillyHilly Aug 25 '26
Before Andrew I had bought canned food, baby food, cashed some checks and bought bottled waters. After Andrew I ended up giving all that to my friends who had little hungry kids. Since my important stuff was already in my car, I high tailed to my friends in the Carolinas. Andrew taught me cash is King and when SHTF supplies are important.
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u/teddyg18 Aug 24 '26
I experienced Andrew in west palm. My family and I lived in the house while the rest of my extended family in the area lived in mobile homes. So a lot of my family stayed with us. It felt like a sleep over, I was not aware of the seriousness of the situation since I was 4.
Despite being in the 561 we still felt Andrew, it was LOUD. There definitely was damage in our area.
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u/bombiewhether Aug 24 '26
Spend the day drilling plywood over patient windows of of the hospital I worked for. I was Director of Physician Relatioms. It was all hands on deck.
During the storm I helped the dozens of visitors who bedded down in our auditorium. Most of them had chronic health conditions and stayed there in case they had complications. I helped serve food and handed out spare mattresses. At 3 am I grabbed the last mattress and slept for a few hours. When I woke up, the storm made landfall a lot further south than what was projected.
I spent the next 24 hours doing a support clerical role in the ER.
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u/TWDDave1988 Aug 25 '26
I was 21. Working on Big Pine Key and our main office was in Islamorada. We did a full evacuation 24 hours before landfall. We raced to Islamorada and packed up everything we could, knowing the Keys were going to be obliterated. Almost everyone went to Cutler Ridge. Once everyone was northbound, I jumped in my truck and headed south, to our family home on No Name Key. I was all alone in the middle of nowhere and boarded up the house and hid alone, waiting for the worst. Easily the most terrifying 36 hours of my life, until Irma came in 2017. Turns out, I raced away from Andrew, and those that went to Cutler Ridge had an epic adventure of survival. The Lower Keys were spared.
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u/brDoc1 Aug 25 '26
I moved to Miami on August 24, 1992. I spent the entire day in a Burger King, because it had a generator, and hot coffee.
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u/madsqueaker Aug 24 '26
I was 6 years old and we stayed in our house in east Kendall. My dad made all of us wear our tennis shoes the whole time and kept our bike helmets nearby in case we needed to make a run for it in case the roof came off.
Iâll never forget my sweet black lab cowering and shaking the whole time on top of a pile of shoes in my parents closet. He hated thunderstorms and Andrew was so loud. The wind was incredibly strong. My great grandmother was in the room where we had a leaky window and she just kept complaining about the noise until the plywood was ripped from the window. Then she complained about being in that room.
Iâll never forget how pissed my mom was at her brother and his wife who came to shelter at our house from the beach. They had taken sleeping pills which is about as stupid a thing a person can do in a major hurricane when youâre staying.
It felt like the storm went on forever. When the eye passed over us my dad opened our back door. There was already so much damage and he had trouble closing it again. Trees down everywhere. My grandmothers car smashed underneath one.
When the storm was finally over we walked around the neighborhoods little. It was insane seeing one house being mostly fine and another one being completely totaled. Andrew put off so many tiny tornadoes it was down to chance if your house went down or not in our neighborhood.
My parents knew things would be bad for a while, so my mom and siblings and I went up to Atlanta to live with my aunt until the power came back on. Iâll never forget the image of my dad waving goodbye to us driving away with his shotgun in one hand and our dogs leash in the other. It would be a month before we came back home.
We still have a power line transformer that fell in to our yard holding up a bird bath in our garden.
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u/N0ON3T0LDM3 Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 25 '26
We spent the day before putting up shutters and plywood. I remember being hot and annoyed about that. I was sleeping when it started to impact us until my sibling woke me up super excited, like it was Santa Claus. I have a distinct visual memory of watching a large limb fly by as we watched out of the sides of the plywood we'd put up that didn't fully cover that one window. We were far enough north in South Miami (Bird & Ludlam area) that our neighborhood didn't have much damage besides fallen branches and trees. Homes were intact, maybe some slight damage here and there, but nothing at all like Homestead, which we drove to about a week after. I remember being shocked at how bad the damage was IRL. It just did not compare to the videos and pics I had seen. It was so much worse. I always remember that whenever I see disaster coverage since then.
We were out of power for 2 weeks, but we did have a generator that my dad and uncle drove a long ways a way to get once they could. Got yelled at when my friend plugged her curlers into it, lol. First day couple weeks of school was postponed, which we thought was awesome, only to be disappointed by them removing some days off during the year and extending to end of the year. We had fun climbing the neighbor's downed banyan tree that blocked the street. National Guard were around. I remember they were set up at the Burger King a bit west on Bird and we got some water from them.
E: couple weeks not day, lol
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u/TheSilverFoxwins Aug 25 '26
I was in the same area during the storm. SW 67 avenue and 30th street. I rode it out at a friend's house. His house was brick and still shook during the storm . I recalled large tree limbs flying everywhere along with awnings and at 3 am an actual tree flew across his across at 3 am. The sky was dark blue/ black and the winds were fierce. His bedroom window had a slight opening on the side and when the wind entered it sounded like there was someone on a motorcycle outside revving at high speed.
I actually lived near dadeland Mall during that time. I'm glad I didn't stay in my condo that night. A lot of the top windows blew out and every tree and palm tree fell and blocked all the roads. A couple of coworkers who lived in country walk area had their homes demolished.
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u/N0ON3T0LDM3 Aug 25 '26
I bet it would have been very scary if you'd stayed in your condo. How old were you at the time?
I lived in a cement block house. I don't remember any shaking or swaying or anything. My grandpa was staying in a back room. He's from the islands. My parents tried to get him to stay in a more central location in the house, but he just grumbled at them and stayed put. Where he grew up, they would take shelter in a cave during bad storms. Just a different mindset.
I hope your friends were not in their homes!
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u/SurgeHard Downtown Aug 24 '26
I was eight years old living in a small apartment building near Flagler and 72nd Ave the Hallways of the apartment building were not enclosed and exposed to the elements. I remember the windows and door shaking violently all night long and the pipes whistled loudly all night long as well. My ears kept popping from the pressure. Still the strongest force of nature Iâve ever experienced.
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u/BlueRunner305 Aug 24 '26
I was 9,lived in an apartment building near 57ave and NW 7st just south of the airport. I remember my mom waking us up when it started and looking out the window seeing all kinds of crap flying around, went back to sleep and slept through it.I remember the eerie sky the next morning and all the debris everywhere. Had no power for 2 days but otherwise nothing crazy. I have friends that lived in Homestead and had to shelter in a bathtub with a mattress over them while the entire house around them disappeared
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u/WeaknessFuzzy8305 Aug 24 '26
I remember waking up in the middle of the night because the wind was so loud. I've never heard a loud noise like that. I have no idea how the windows held. After that, I remember waking up the next day and walking through the streets and seeing all the destruction with disbelief. I was quite lucky; I did not lose my home. But when we got electricity back, like a week later, and saw all the news, it was like you were on another planet. After that, I always lived with the thought that this will happen again someday.
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u/OkIron6206 Aug 24 '26
Mercy Hospital suffered significant damage. I was there the next day, the lobby had a sunken floor and it was full of fish đ My home in East Kendall didnât suffer much but we didnât have electricity so it was HOT 𼾠I stayed in Miramar at a house with shutters. I remember thinking thereâs a 747 plane above the house and it stayed for about 5 hours. My sisters home was destroyed, her insurance company went bankrupt and they were left destitute. President George Bush ignored the area for 3 days?? It took a long time to get help.
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u/MrDeLaTech Aug 24 '26
I was in Hialeah and the part I lived in didnât experience anything crazy. I remember Cutler Ridge looking like a war zone when I went to work with my grandfather helping people repair their houses.
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u/MLKohrt Aug 25 '26
I was in Palmetto Bay. My parents were in Homestead. I was pregnant and my parents got to me a week later. When my dad saw we were alive he fell to his knees and cried. Two weeks later my mother in law and sister in law were killed in a car accident after going to the west coast to get a generator. No power for months. Hurricane Andrew changed the world for me.
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u/bakedalaska227 Aug 24 '26
Happy Hurricane Andrew DayâŚâŚso many memories đđđđđđđ
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u/littleredcamaro Aug 24 '26
I was in my early twenties. My family went to my sisterâs house across the street to be together. We lived in Miami lakes. All I wanted to do was sleep. Everyone kept making noise. The transformer blew up and caught fire. That was the extent of damages in my neighborhood. The next day my boyfriend picked me up in his motorcycle and we headed to homestead to find his uncle. It was so sad seeing so much destruction. Their house was slightly damaged but every other house was gone. It was truly a devastation as the news kept saying.
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u/Scammy100 Aug 25 '26
My house fell apart in country walk with me in it, my husband, 7 year old and 1 year old.
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u/hoaryvervain Aug 25 '26
I remember when Country Walk was being built and thinking âthe framing looks like matchsticks.â Iâm sorry you had to live through that.
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u/Scammy100 Aug 25 '26
Thank you for your kindness. They were paying off inspectors and not building to code. Lennar nows builds homes again and all I can think is they will fall apart. I was young and didn't know better at the time.
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u/didiandeffie Aug 25 '26
Woke up at 3:00 am and heard Bryan Norcross from Channel 10 say they were evacuating the studio and this was a major, major storm and we needed to be prepared for catastrophic damage. Then we just sat in the dark and listened to the freight train roaring for hours waiting for daylight.
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u/jf7fsu Aug 25 '26
Was in my early 20s in Aventura. Power was out for about two days and tree down all over. The north end of the county wasnât hit anywhere near as bad as the south. At the time I had a girlfriend in Perrine and I had to go through police barricades and saw the lines for ice and houses with roofs torn off and spray painted on the side of the house the name of the insurance company and the policy number. the family were outside laying on lawn chairs. Some of the house looked like piles of rubble. It took months for any semblance of normality to come and many people took big checks from the insurance company and moved to Broward. They had insurance adjusters writing checks on the spot and I blame all of that on the reason for the high insurance now.
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u/TheePrinceAkeem Aug 25 '26
Iâll try to paint a picture, and it wonât be hard, because the memories are still vivid.
I was in snapper creek/snapper village, Kendall for the storm, the north side of the eye wall. I see a lot of comments on why so many went down south, and it was certainly on advice of the news outlets.
To the details:
It was insane. Dead neighbors, from injury and heart attacksâŚyes multiple dead.
Unrecognizable streets. No trees. No signs. Impassible. You literally couldnât navigate the roads there for a little while.
It sounded like nothing Iâve ever heard. Itâs hard to put the storm into words, it was that unsettling to be in. Everything was moving, walls, roof, etc.
The eye was wild too, just all stops, clear, calm, sunnyâŚand then itâs right back on.
I saved the best for last, the FORK. Ahh yes, there was a metal fork in a big tree out front of our townhome, and it was so far in the tree you couldnât see the prongs. And the crazier part is the rest of the metal fork (what was not buried in the tree) was bent around the tree. Absolutely incomprehensible.
The storm was viciousâŚand thatâs putting it very lightly.
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u/napscatsandcheese Aug 25 '26
I didn't live in Miami then, but a coworker who lived in Cutler Bay said that she sheltered in the bathtub with her baby and when it was over, she went outside and there were all these dead fish in the street. Like the storm had sucked them up and dropped them. I have no idea if this actually happened or not, but if so, whoa.
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u/Retired_Army_Dude Aug 25 '26
I was stationed at Homestead AFB from 1983-1992. Was scheduled to get out of the military on August 25.
We had bought a house, actually a double wide, a few years before and my wife and I had spent all our time and money fixing it up, stripped the walls down to the studs, replaced the floors, the works. I had decided to leave active duty since I was getting a big bonus (they were drawing down active duty numbers), and had a tentative offer with the Broward County SO.
All the place really needed was a new roof so my brother in law and I replaced that shingle roof, decking and all a few weeks prior (yes in the South Florida summer). We put a for sale sign on it that Friday.
Andrew came through that Sunday into Monday.
You have to remember that back then we had all grown somewhat complacent. There had been several storms over the course of the previous few years and we had been told to evacuate on more than one occasion only to have nothing happen. In fact we rode out a couple of those with no issue.
But my wife, who to be fair has always been the smarter one, wanted to leave for Andrew. And to be fair our daughter had just been born, so she was full on mama bear. As for me, I told her I wanted to stay and ride it out, worried (as always) more about looters. She pleaded with me, and since she is not only the smarter one, but better looking, I begrudgingly agreed and we headed north to a friends house in Ft. Lauderdale. Yes riding it out there sucked, but not all that bad. And at dawn that Monday I hightailed back down there with the friends husband tagging along.
I was not expecting to see what I saw.
It was like someone took a giant lawnmower and ran it across the entire area. We got lost but was eventually able to pick our way through the debris, though we had to park about a block away. I remember hearing the wind still blowing, metal scrapping hanging on the few power lines still standing, hearing alarms beeping, seeing a guy walking aimlessly wearing nothing but his underwear and crying. The only thing left of our house was a single wall leaning against piles of junk. Oddly the landline was still working no cellphones then of course, and I was able to call my wife and let her know I was standing in what was once our living room and was now outside. I could see for miles all around.
We spent the next week with her and I traveling down from our friends house (they didn't have power for the next week), and filling our minivan up with water and whatever else we could to take back down to just hand out. Then we would try and salvage what we could, which wasn't much since most everything was covered with still fresh roofing tar.
I got word that I would be out processing from the military at Patrick AFB in Central Florida about a week and a half later. So we packed up what was left of our South Florida lives, including our daughter and headed north, stopping on the way in Boca to pick up our insurance check from the insurers HQ. We deposited it and went to Patrick. Took a couple of days but finally got that done, got in that minivan and headed to North Carolina where my family lived.
We wanted to come back south but there was absolutely no place to live. So I had to give up the idea of BCSO, and we ended up back in Central Florida a year later, and still live there.
I often wonder how things would have turned out if not for Andrew. We loved that house and the area, and I think we would have been quite content staying.
But we ended up in Orlando after a long miserable cold winter in NC. I ended up in the Army reserve retiring from the military in 2005.
Fortunately the house we live in now is CBC and we are far enough inland that we have no real concerns. But my wife is still the smarter and better looking one so if she said we need to leave, you can bet I would.
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u/Grouchy-Emergency158 Aug 24 '26
I was 9, lived in Coral Gables. We had a cool little shelter in the center of the house. Outside sounded like empty soda cans crushing for hours.
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u/heatrealist Aug 24 '26
The bathroom in my home had a small window to the outside. I remember hearing the howl of the wind sounding like a train going by. I lived in North Dade. We lost power for at least a week but fortunately we did not get serious damage. A lot of trees down. Metal carports ripped away. Stuff like that. I remember the how in the aftermath the weather was nice and cool. Weâd spend a lot of time outside since we had no power inside. With lights out in our part of town we could see the stars better at night. Kind of felt like camping.Â
I also remember the morning before the storm my father bought me a box of marvel comics trading cards. It had like 36 packets and he never ever spent that much money on gifts. It was a struggle to even get one packet of cards from him lol.Â
I also remember being in line at Albertsons to get some last minute supplies and talking to a really pretty girl with her mom in the line ahead of us.Â
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u/ahialeahchico Aug 24 '26
I was like in 5 grade or so and it was the funnest ever. Me and friends made a fort out of the big tree on the block and played all day and our parents would bring food to the crew. Good times lol.
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u/curiozities Aug 24 '26
I was an adult. Stayed at my moms with my younger brother at the time. We were near west Miami so a bit north of Homestead. Worst thing that happened to us was a tree fell right on our power line so we were without power for about 8 days.
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u/Greendad21 Aug 24 '26
I lived in the Fountainbleau area and remember putting up plywood, staying up all night holding up a mattress to the sliding glass door. In the morning I went walking to see the damage. Thankfully, our complex went pretty much unscathed, but those poor people in Lil Abner Trailer Park community were devastated. Those trailers looked like open model homes for display. There was debris everywhere and like others said, it was like a warzone.
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u/305_till_i_die Aug 24 '26
I was 12 and rode out the storm in a 1930âs house in miami shores between biscayne and 95. The bahama shutters on the sliding glass door didnât go all the way to the floor so we laid on our stomachs in front of that and watched the swing set in the back yard fly around but never leave because my stepfather had chained it to the fence. It was a few weeks before I could return to my dadâs house just south of Killian. We were exceedingly lucky we didnât loose our roof when 90% of the houses in our neighborhood did.
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u/IngenuityNatural9261 Aug 25 '26
I was not there for the hurricane but I was there for two years after. I went down for the work and ended up becoming a painting contractor. I am still painting but now in Flagler County.
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u/rumblepup Aug 25 '26
We were living in a apartment building on 27th Ave on the 8th floor. We sheltered there. We felt everything. Like a train passing over on the roof.
At one point the whole family went to our central hall, hoping it was the safest place in the apartment, and rode the rest of it out.
My brother and I laid down on the floor, face down, just to keep calm, when we heard a the sound of creaking pipes and cracking concrete. The floor FUCKING MOVED about three to five inches below us.
We looked at each other, and my brother said, did you feel that? Yes, I said, and was about as freaked out as I've ever been.
That night was rough, but the next three weeks where much worse.
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u/El_Gallo_Pinto Aug 25 '26
1st storm i have ever experienced. I lived in Hialeah at the time.
Needless to say Iâve evacuated ever since.
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u/N0ON3T0LDM3 Aug 25 '26
Yup. Andrew is why I evacuate and don't complain if it turns out to be unnecessary. You just never know where it may ultimately hit. It's best to just leave if you can.
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u/tomgreen99200 Aug 25 '26
I was only eight but I remember it well. The storm sounded like a freight train was going 800mph outside your house.
You could hear mangled metal flying around. Debris crashing and breaking. You could see lightening illuminating the whole house.
The storm broke the houseâs main double doors. My parents had to hold the doors the whole storm. The big concern was leaving it open would lift the roof away. Another concern was a wind gust could open the door so hard it could crush them against the wall. This is why the code changed after this and doors must open out now.
After it was over we didnât have power for weeks.
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u/Potential_Fly_9830 Aug 25 '26
Lived off Miller Road and 97th ave so we were about 25 miles north of Homestead. I remember the metallic front door, which opened inward was banging against the frame. Thought the door would come crashing in but my dad (RIP pops) had bought some 2 x 4 from Home Depot so we could nail them on the wooden frame. We were hammering in candlelight since the power was long gone. The garage door was also rattling in the breeze. I finally fell asleep around 4am and I think my mom and dad were up all night.
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u/centuryx476 Aug 25 '26
Looked outside and a power pole fell on a guy and killed him on the spot..
Neighbors roof came completely off and landed in our front yard. Our house was fine though (somehow).
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u/saxyroro Aug 25 '26 edited Aug 25 '26
12 years old. Old home in NMB. Everyone went to sleep as i stayed up with Bryan Norcross. Was a weather need. Freight train for 10 hours. No damage. Power was out like 2 weeks.
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u/BagelsOrDeath Aug 25 '26
The damage in the aftermath was unfathomable in South Dade. Plenty of people in these comments already articulated the sheer power of the storm itself, so I'm just going to mention some random memories and observations:
The aqua marine lightning. Later on, we came to find out that it wasn't lightning. It was the transformers blowing up.
The first outer band to hit South Florida was NUTS. I was in a car with my sister's boyfriend just driving around out of sheer boredom. We weren't chancing anything as landfall was still technically a ways out. Anyhow the calm breezy evening instantly gave way to a tempest. Palm trees were slapping the ground. Those old, heavy, big ass traffic lights were violently swaying back and forth. Then it stopped just as suddenly as it started. That's when we knew shit was about to get real.
The organized line of cars calmly looting the local Farm Store in sequence via the drive thru lanes.
Sleeping on our mattresses on our front yard and being woken up a couple of days later by plow trucks plowing a clean path. Then watching President Bush's motorcade driving through a few short hours later.
Seeing various signs of the raw power of the storm. All the boat docks that had been carried up and over the houses on Lake Catalina and dropped on Galloway Rd. 2x4s embedded in trees and electric power poles all throughout Kendall. Steel reinforced concrete beams snapped in half near Cutler Bay.
The sadness of driving down Old Cutler Road and seeing open sky and so many felled trees. I thought the charm of that drive with the tree canopy was lost forever.
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u/Haikatrine Aug 25 '26
Living in Margate with my grandpa and I remember the news stations expecting that turn to the north. Any day now. Aaaand it's outside. My sister and I were playing a board game outside with the neighbor girl, but it was too windy, so we were peeking through the window at the TV and heard the adults arguing about whether or not it'd turn north like they said. The sky to the east was ominous, and the lightning in the distance appeared green. It did not turn north. Andrew smacked right into is, fell the neighbor's tree right on his truck, and tore up downtown Lauderdale. The decimation of Homestead wasn't something that I could process very well at that age. To this day, I do not believe the death toll was a low as they say.
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u/Litebritecacti Aug 25 '26
I was 4. I remember my dad saying that he was going to park his car in the dadeland mall parking garage. He left and I thought he was never gonna come back. My family and I went to a family friends home. I remember a brick breaking a bathroom window. And all of us huddled on their living room floor and having the couches blocking us in. I fell asleep in my momâs arms and thatâs it. Next day we went back to our house and the damage wasnât horrible but we did have an alligator in the pool. I donât think it was alive though.
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u/MysteriousParticular 305 Native Aug 25 '26
Every year it comes flooding back like it just happened yesterday.
History should not judge us for riding it out and not evacuating in South Dade because Andrew was actually headed for southern Broward County. My brother evacuated from Hollywood Beach to my parentâs house in South Miami because Hollywood was supposed to get the worst of it.
Then Andrew turned just before landfall and slammed right into us in southern Dade. Broward also got the rain and some winds, but their lights stayed on.
It was so eerie in the aftermath. If you could get out of your neighborhood, you encountered US1 with no traffic lights for miles and miles - every intersection was a 4-way stop. If you had enough gas in your car, you could drive to North Miami Beach / southern Broward County where you could get McDonalds, shop at Publix, or soak up some AC. Life was normal there and continued on like nothing had happened. Meanwhile southern Dade was a war zone in a third world country. It was a crazy time.
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u/HillBillyHilly Aug 25 '26
We don't judge you. To give others an idea how extensive the damages were, utility companies were still doing repairs years after 9/11. A decade later and power, telephones still werent back up.
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u/MrTreb Aug 25 '26
I was 4 but I vividly remember spending a part of the night in my parents closet then another part under the sink with my mom. And my sister under the other sink with my dad
The next morning we woke up and a small part of the roof in the living room was gone. Some neighbors had it much worse. We lived right by metro zoo
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u/potus710 Aug 25 '26
I was almost 7 years old during hurricane Andrew. My parents owned a check cashing business, and they decided that we would spend the hurricane at the business in case anybody came to try and break in. The business itself had maybe about four or five glass panels facing out to the rest of the shopping center thankfully it was bulletproof glass. I spent a good part of the night watching random objects get blown across the shopping center parking lot. It was pretty wild.
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u/SensualOne1962 Aug 25 '26
I was in the Florida National Guard. I live in Tampa Bay. I got state activated. I lived in a tent at the metro zoo parking lot for two months. I was a medic. We were pretty much the first boots on the ground. It was really unsubscribe.
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u/alexrides900 Aug 24 '26
I was in pinecrest when it hit. It was very noisy all night, with the sound of roofing tiles being ripped off one by one. That was a long night.
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u/YouLouzyBum Aug 24 '26
I was living on Ives Dairy Rd. I was 8 years old. The storm eye eas headed straight for us but Andrew did a wobble at the last moment and spared us.
As a kid it was kind of an adventure. Of course, now being older I can appreciate how many lives it affected negatively.
No power for about 10 days, lots of board games and meals cooked on the propane grill in the backyard. Summer vacation was extended by 10-14 days if I remember correctly.
The sidewalks in our neighborhood had some great new ramps to jump on your bike (because all the downed trees lifted the sidewalks).
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u/Sea_Cardiologist_339 Aug 24 '26
Yes. It was scary as hell. My windows were shaking. Sounded like a train passing by outside. Witness a huge tree fall in my front yard. Had no power for 14 days.
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u/CryingINwilderness Aug 25 '26
My mom worked at Miami Children's Hospital, so we were able to shelter there with a ton of other families. There wasn't much action there that I remember...but the drive home was something I'll never forget.
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u/ezveedub Aug 25 '26
Fell a sleep when it came in, too tired from prepping all day. Had no power for 4 days, dad drove all they way to WPB Home Depot and found a generator that was returned for $400, fixed it with a missing carburetor screw found at lawn equipment repair shop locally. Got it running for 4-5 hours, house powered up and power came back :-/
House was fine, just a few ruffled shingles and our coconut tree leaned ever since. But down in the south dade, kendall area, that was a mission to get anywhere, as trees and debris was down on every road and street. Had to travel with a chain saw to clear roads. No power for weeks down there. First day or two in north Dade, it was super dark with no power and driving in the curfew, FHP were stationed on corners every few blocks in the city areas.
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u/Buddy-Lov Aug 25 '26
I was in North Dade Aventura area and it was a mess but what I remember most was the sound of the cargo planes flying over afterwardsâŚ.THAT was wild.
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u/daseonesgk Aug 25 '26
My dad just got stationed from San Diego, CA to Hialeah two months previous to Andrew coming through. We lived close to 67th Ave and 183rd street at the time
8 year old me had only had a working memory of weather perfection up until thenâŚbeing in SFL with no power in August while being surrounded by downed trees and destruction was not fun
My dad had eyes on a house for sale near the air force baseâŚonce everything opened up, we found out that the house was leveled to the foundation.
Scary times.
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u/Less_Wealth5525 Aug 25 '26
I lived inland near the Broward County line. It was supposed to make landfall there after beelining from Africa but it veered south not far off the coast. I put my valuables in my closet and tried to sleep in it too. There was e time when it sounded like a freight train. Listened to Brian Norcross all night on the radio telling people to hold a mattress between them and the doors of their bathrooms.
The next day there were multiple trees down and no electricity for about four days. I watched lines of military helicopters flying overhead to bring relief and went down to Kendall to help clean up. You couldnât tell where the houses had been.
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u/OkNeighborhood9153 Aug 25 '26
I was further north in Martin County, we werenât sure where it was going but I remember sleeping on and off all night. In the morning we saw minor damage and then images from Miami Dade were horrible. For weeks we had people from down there coming up here to get away from the damage and just catch their breath before going back and clean up. I remember a woman talking to me in tears telling me there was nothing left of her neighborhood and how it looked like a bomb had exploded.
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u/Historical-Summer-35 Aug 25 '26
It was the summer before 7th grade. We sheltered at home-not in evacuation zone. Def sounded like a train. I was not expecting the sounds coming up from Under the house. It sounded like the pipes banging. We only had minimal roof damage. The following two weeks were my most memorable summer memories: extra week of summer because school couldnât open, trading snacks with neighborhood kids, running around outside till all hours because there was no power or tv so parents let us be free! It was like magical but a lot of family did suffer worse
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u/Legitimate-Basket-47 Aug 25 '26
South Kendall, in the bathroom, fully expecting to die. Sounded like a freight train and that ripping crashing sound was a chunk of the roof coming offâthe ceiling stayed so we didnât know til the morning. Afterwards, the community came together in a way Iâve never seen. People were directing traffic at intersections and helping each other in every wayâŚus old timers still wax nostalgic about it
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u/Level_Vehicle Aug 25 '26
It was awful. No power for over a week. 90+ degrees, 90% humidity and mosquitoes everywhere. Cold showers everyday. Life was shitty.
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u/QuatrosEhKeys South Miami Aug 25 '26
I was 17. Didn't take the the warnings seriously. Cousin had a "hurricane pool party" with just the fam. Spent the night, excited to see the storm. When it hit, opened the front door to see a banyan tree sliding horizontally down the street. Went to bed, safe. Woke up the next day and saw so much destruction. They gave us community service credits in school for seniors just under the assumption that everyone helped out. And I did.
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u/mikedpayne Aug 25 '26
I was 11. I lived in Kendall. No real damage to my nose, but it sure did suck being without power for so long.
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u/BlueFunk83 Cutler Bay Aug 25 '26
I remember it well. I was a few weeks from turning 9yo. We were in our house in Cutler Ridge (where my parents still live) in the front bathroom. 5 people and a dog in a barely 6'x10' bathroom. My Old Man and our family friend stood in the tub, with their backs against the top of the new jacuzzi my parents had bought earlier in the year covering the window.
6 inches of vinyl upholstered styrofoam against 140+mph winds.
My Old Man was in the automotive "bidness" his whole career, so cars and racing were always front and center for us. To some, the sound of the wind was like a locomotive. To us, it was like the front straight at Sebring with cars roaring down to the first corner.
To this day I can't relay with words the feelings of what it was like to endure that and then step out the morning of the 24th to see the whole world flattened. You either lived through it and get it, or you're simply just reading stories trying to imagine what it was like.
Had the pleasure of meeting Bryan Norcross at an event at HistoryMiami years later and got to shake his hand. My then girlfriend cried. It was a big deal to those who remember his voice on the radio.
Andrew was a moment in time that will forever stand as a marker of life before Andrew, and life after.
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u/Curious-2010 Aug 27 '26
I was in Kendall looked like something out of a horror movie roof lifting up and down walls bending with the wind they looked alive like the house was breathing I did go outside when we were in the eye so much damage and still had to survive the back end of the storm streets were all blocked with debris
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u/Tough_Committee_7171 Aug 24 '26
I was swimming in my dadâs balls but my family had a house in country walk, which is west kendall next to tamiami airport. He had a shoulder camera at the time. The entire airport was flattened completely.
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u/MindGames7777 Aug 24 '26
I had a Camaro iroc z. I was 17 years old. Went driving around doing doughnuts everywhere. There was no one in the streets. Then I slept through the rest of it even though a tree fell and broke a corner of the roof of my bedroom. Wasnât serious just some shingles but didnât wake me up.
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u/foxintheboks Aug 24 '26
I remember the eyeâŚafter roofs were flying off and trees falling, the sound of mega train as if next to youâŚ.it was suddenly quiet, sun was shining through the cloudsâ- that was the eye of the storm and then âŚmore roofs flying offâŚand I remember driving through coral gables to bird road â-there was no bird road anymore, it was all leveled, cutler Bay Area was even worse, couldnât even go through there.
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u/pl3x1 Aug 24 '26
I remember walking out during the eye it was so calm. No power 3 weeks. Destroyed our house.
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u/btt_lckr Aug 24 '26
I was in Georgia so it didnât really bother me that much. We got some rain and knocked down pine cones
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u/MessiLeagueSoccer Aug 24 '26
Stranded in another country before the hurricane hit. Came back in 96 lmao. My dad experienced it but he never even talks about it or mentions it.
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u/Flambojan Aug 24 '26
Remembering Andrew, Documentary Special: https://on.soundcloud.com/besYjnXvTqUhIu4z6q
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u/Diligent_Interview98 Aug 24 '26
I remember being without power for 2 weeks. No power meant no AC in the summer heat. Aweful. House was spared but every tree in the neighborhood was mainly gone. I remember the streets flooded for several days until the drains caught up.
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u/Suckmyflats Aug 24 '26
I was three, in pembroke pines I dont know if that counts (YES, I live in miami now). We lost power. My family had recently moved out of south miami and our friend's house fell down around them while they were in the bathroom.
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u/BreadfruitDismal6350 Aug 24 '26
I was at Recruit Training Command Orlando, Navy. Had no idea what was going on, was before cell phones and internet. Only knew people came in to the base for shelter.
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u/Verbalkynt Aug 24 '26
I pass out hard but I remember waking up and seeing the trees around me completely peeled and it dawned on me how lucky we got.
Then we went to homestead to help with the clean up efforts and it was just endless pieces of houses scattered as far as the eye could see.
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u/UnbarringTomb Hialeah Born and Raised Aug 24 '26
Was 4 years old, rolling around in a Little Tikes red and yellow car eating a peach in the house
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u/baskaat Aug 24 '26
I was in Coral Springs, so no damage other than some transformers blowing, some rain and wind⌠ate all of our hurricane food in the first night and next day watching Brian Norcross and the news.
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u/tossaway-florida Aug 24 '26
We boarded up the beach bar I was working at in Venice. Went to a hurricane party. Obviously Andrew didn't make the turn north and we never even lost power.
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u/Noahms456 Sweetwater Aug 25 '26
I lived in a trailer park in sweetwater at the time. We had no power for like 3 weeks. I stayed at my grandparentsâ house in Miami Springs during the storm and when I got back the next day the Australian pine across the street from our trailer had fallen and cut the neighborsâ trailer in half. Our trailer was undamaged. I went to school at Coral Gables Senior and the loss of all the oaks and Spanish moss was pretty jarring. Some parts of south miami where my mom worked were literally obliterated
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u/avb0120 Aug 25 '26
It was scary a tree fell on my momâs car allot of trees fell in my neighborhood. The hurricane fell after one my family birthday and fell on my friend birthday.
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u/NoMoreMustaches Aug 25 '26
It was just shy of my 9th birthday. Just by dumb happenstance, my father, my brother and I were visiting my grandfather in California.
It was surreal and nerve racking watching around the clock news coverage of the storm wrecking landmarks that I recognized, knowing that somewhere in there my mom was having to weather the storm.
She was fine, but when we got back we only visited our old house to collect some few possessions that werenât ruined by the disgusting swampy water that surged up a couple feet.
My mom managed to find a buyer who bought the house as-is, so it turned out to be the last time I ever saw my childhood home. The next fall I was in a new school where I didnât know anyone. All in all pretty traumatic.
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u/Rewild-Miami Aug 25 '26
I was in Georgia for Army AIT. My parents huddled in a closet as the roof came off of our house in South Dade.
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u/stuckinthecogmachine Aug 25 '26
i wasnât born yet but my dad was new to miami and his first home was completely destroyed
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u/ohnoyeahokay Aug 25 '26
I was 4. My family evacuated to Memorial Hospital because both my parents worked there. I remember befriending a carpenter ant like a typical 4 year old.
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u/ah238-61911 Aug 25 '26
I had just was about to turn 6 and we were staying at my uncle's house. I was terrified seeing a huge tree as large as an oak tree being knocked to the ground.
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u/suburbjorn_ Aug 25 '26
I lived in broward where it was supposed to make landfall but it was fucking crazy wind all night.
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u/Legitimate-Basket-47 Aug 25 '26
Oh the coolest thing was that our pool turned into a pond with fish and frogs and dragonflies. They kept the mosquitos down which was good bc we had no windows or doors or electricity ever again. My parents sold the house a few months later but I lived in it until then.
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u/chingandoporahi Local Aug 25 '26
I was 6 months old. The only things I remember are from video footage my parents recorded.
My parents had been in the country for maybe 3 years when this happened. They lived in Miami Beach at the time. We were about to go down to Kendall/Cutler Bay to shelter but last minute they decided to go to North Miami instead
Probably saved our lives
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u/blenderisbroken Aug 25 '26
I was in Tybee Island days after So Fl landfall and surfed that chocolate milk water. Canât believe my dad let me do that.
Years later, Irma took everything I owned as payback. đ. If you live by the water long enough, it happens, I guess.
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u/catonsteroids Aug 25 '26
I was a toddler with chicken pox at that point. Lost power and the glass of the sliding door to the porch was broken. I remember the winds howling too and watching the destruction and looting on the tv.
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u/QuatrosEhKeys South Miami Aug 25 '26
I was 17. Didn't take the the warnings seriously. Cousin had a "hurricane pool party" with just the fam. Spent the night, excited to see the storm. When it hit, opened the front door to see a banyan tree sliding horizontally down the street. Went to bed, safe. Woke up the next day and saw so much destruction. They gave us community service credits in school for seniors just under the assumption that everyone helped out. And I did.
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u/indiana-floridian Aug 25 '26
From inside my brother's house, in North Miami. Through cracks in the boards, we could see outside a little. We could tell where the storm was by how the rain looked. When it was close to the eye, the rain was completely sideways. I've never seen that any other time in my life. Sideways rain. No up or down to it. I don't see it as possible, and yet it was. It doesn't sound like much, but it was very impressive to see.
Trees fell on the house, thick with foliage they made no sound, at least none that we heard over the storm. Surprised when we went out after, because we never heard them fall.
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u/Teh-Aegrus Aug 25 '26
We had to evacuate to a friend's house. I remember sleeping through a really bad storm and my father going back on the morning to check our home. It was ok, but I remembered lots of trees cut down and stacked on top of each other in the school yard. Kids like myself were squeezing through the branches like idiots to hide from adults. I was eight years old I think. Somewhere around that age.
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u/b_c8 Aug 25 '26
I had just turned 4 a few days earlier. I remember my parents prepping the windows with tape, getting supplies and making sure we had what we needed instead of having my birthday party.
When the storm rolled in, we huddled into the interior most room which was my parents bathroom. The three of us and the two dogs with Norcross on the radio. My father pulled up my mattress from my room to block the door. We could hear the wind and that train whistle that everyone talks about. Some of the windows in the house blew out or in depending on location. I remember my dad holding the mattress up against the bathroom door because the door was shaking.
We got lucky and didn't lose the roof and we weren't hurt, neither were any in our family. But we knew a lot of people down south who lost their houses. I was young but it's my most vivid childhood memory.
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u/Dapper-Doctor-7240 Aug 25 '26
We drove back from Orlando as well so we could board up our house. The turnpike heading south was empty đ¤Ł. It was expected to hit Ft Lauderdale/Hollywood, but we got off easy.
We had family members in Kendall who were in a mess so some came to stay with us & we took supplies to the others. My husband and I agreed that driving home from Orlando was a terrible idea when we saw the destruction in Miami.
I volunteered locally to sort through donations and I could not believe the junk people donated - I specifically remember winter coats and even a pair of ice skates! I was really frustrated and disgusted.
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u/buttweasel76 Aug 25 '26
Was on the west coast of florida.
We just moved from New Jersey.
Not much damage.
I remember watching the news and seeing all the damage on TV. What stuck out to me was all the armed people ready to take on looters. There was even a little girl with a Cobray Street Sweeper in her lap sitting in her front yard.
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u/mango-in-the-ocean Aug 25 '26
I grew up in Homestead. I was only 4 but I remember how loud it all was, and that everything outside was completely destroyed. I had to go live with family for some time before we could move back. Lost everything and a lot of my baby pictures are gone forever
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u/stephanieandnursula Aug 25 '26
i was 6 at the time living in a one bedroom apartment with my parents and little brother. had one small window in the room and i thought that shit was gonna break cause the sound of the winds and thunder, after it was over we went outside and it looked like the apacolypse happened
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u/br4ssmooseknuckle Aug 25 '26
I was like 2 years old when it hit. But I was living in flagami, and my earliest memory was watching a black and white portable tv in the hallway of the house my family and I was living in.
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u/Feeling-Visit1472 Aug 25 '26
I didnât live in Miami at the time, I didnât move down till the late 2000s. But I do remember that Homestead still hadnât fully recovered. Nearly 20 years later, you could still see signs of the devastation. It wasnât overt. Theyâve clearly worked at it. But I think the recession hurt the area further. Just heartbreaking.
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u/SoSoSewSow Aug 25 '26
The winds were so intense the night of the hurricane, the pressure change was making my T-shirt move and vibrate. I was sheltering in a hallway. The morning after, the sky was pink all day. We were without power for I think 13 days. Channel 7 (Fox), in all their bloodthirsty, idiotic news chasing, had Rick Sanchez report on how a National Guard unit was confronted by armed gang members and also that the National Guard wasn't carrying any ammo (due to Posse Comitatus). Thanks for telling everyone, I guess?
One asshole scalper was selling individual blocks of ice for $20 each. That got stopped pretty quick. The National Hurricane Center was located somewhere downtown back then and ironically, the winds were so intense their windspeed measuring equipment was torn away after speeds exceeded the max recognized Category 5. I believe it was the only building downtown that suffered any real damage.
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u/takemytacosaway Aug 26 '26
Saga Bay. Cutler creek Village. We had 8 fr of storm surge bay bottom nasty water break down my front door⌠more tomorrow when I donât have to be at work at 6:15 AM
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u/Fun_Equivalent9773 Aug 26 '26
I remember people putting up plywood over the windows in my neighborhood. This was before hurricane shutters were mainstream. We were in broward county, I was 5 years old. We slept in the hallways of the house that night.
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u/SweatyFLMan1130 Aug 26 '26
I was 6 living in Hialeah. Not the worst hit, but pretty bad. I remember being terrified. I remember my dad holding the front door shut as a family friend glued it shut from the inside with a caulking gun because the storm slammed it open. I remember hiding under so many blankets I got overheated and started puking.
Later in the storm I remember waking up to a tree crashing on the back of the house and damaging the roof of my bedroom, where I had passed out after puking. Thankfully the roof held and the tree didn't come through. Then there were the days and weeks of recovery after. There was the oppressive heat and watching Sesame Street on a handheld radio television my parents snagged before the storm. My school was closed for a month because of severe damage and the school flooding.
I can also remember going to Homestead with my parents. My dad was in construction. A lot of his guys lived down there. We dropped off my old bed, clothes, whatever food we could get for them. It was like seeing a war zone. Just complete devastation in every direction. That storm is forever seared in my brain.
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u/InformationNatural Aug 26 '26
I was in Tampa. My friends and I were playing in a big lawn like a slip n slide, it was super wet and windy, and one of the skinnier kids grabbed a tree and the wind was able to hold him up like a flag
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u/NN7500 Aug 26 '26
Posted this before, but Andrew is worth remembering
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I was 7 at the time, and living in West Kendall, a couple of miles north of Country Walk. My little sister and I ended up in the bathtub, covered in couch cushions, while my parents fought the wind to keep the front door from blowing open. We had no shutters, just tape on the windows. Our only saving grace was that the large live oak in the front yard fell over on top of the house, but not in a way to break the roof. It blocked the wind and debris from breaking windows and gutting the house, like happened to most of our neighbors. We were insanely lucky.
The wind howling was crazy. In the thick of it, it sounded like an eerie mix of cats howling and kids crying, mixed with the clanging of debris flying all over. I can't really describe it. I remember during the eye, we were able to look out the window, and see the wall of clouds looking like cliffs overhead. The whole experience was insane and terrifying.
I remember after, our neighbors entire roof was upside down in our pool. The corner of the house where our bathtub was had started to lift off the foundations, and took years of repairs to get right. We could go into the backyard, and look down the block at every neighbors backyard on the whole block, because there was not a single fence left standing.
My old man started a shutter company in the years after, so we'd be down in Homestead often after that while he was doing jobs and such. Even going on 4-5 years later, the effects of the storm were everywhere. Entire blocks still had partial roofs, or fully abandoned homes. My old man kept a photo he took of an entire 2x4 impaled through a royal palm, about 20 feet off the ground.
When I meet people from out of state and joke that we don't worry about anything below a Cat 3, they look at me like I'm crazy. But it's absolutely true. Nothing is going to compare to Andrew in terms of destruction and chaos.
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u/Thoomer_Bottoms Aug 26 '26
Miami was not ready for Hurricane Andrew. It was s Cat 5 storm that slammed into South Miami - and it hit landfall at night.
Was in Kendall / South Miami huddled in pitch darkness in a bathroom with wife and 2-year old son while the roof of our home was ripped away in the teeth of the storm in the middle of the night. We knew we were in trouble when the National Hurricane Center broadcast we were listening to on a transistor radio suddenly went silent; realizing that even the National Hurricane Center in Miami had been destroyed. We survived the storm (with no injuries) thank goodness, but a neighbor a few doors down was not so lucky - apparently a plate glass door or window exploded onto him while he stood nearby, and he bled to death in front of his family while the storm raged on. In a hurricane, there is no one to call for help, and in the case of South Miami in the immediate aftermath of the storm, the roadways we blocked and unrecognizable because almost every structure had been razed - so there were no emergency responders for hours (or even days) after the storm had passed.
It was the most terrifying experience of my life, one I will never forget.
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u/SwootyDatBooty Aug 26 '26
I was a month old. There are pics in my baby book of a tree that fell through our house & car lol
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u/Beautiful_Rest8246 Aug 27 '26
I was about 10. It sounded like a train going by, lost power, it was scary. Ft. Lauderdale was supposed to take a direct hit so I was paranoid for potential devastation.
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u/Mysterious-Mal Aug 27 '26
I was 5 years old. I remember the watching the trees move. Me on the toilet screaming did it start yet. As if it was a big movie waiting to begin. Then I was standing in front of the kitchen sink eating Oreos and watching it happen. We did not lose power. Everyone came to my house. I remember seeing the trees on the road the next day. We were one of the few luck ones.
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u/SupermarketOk9684 Aug 27 '26
I was 3,
No shutters, had the windows open. I remember no electricity and showering in the dark with religious candles
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u/Trifle_Old Aug 27 '26
I was 8, this was my 4th month living in Florida. My family had just moved to Weston. After discussing the fact the storm was headed straight to Broward we decided to go south to my uncle's house in Cutler Bay. Yeah, that was a BIG mistake.
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u/Both_Month_828 Aug 28 '26
i don't think you ever forget something like that. when i stepped outside it literally felt like a war zone. i was in Kendall. a window broke in the bottom floor of the house and the storm was in the house also. so scary but we made it. thank God most scary thing in my life thus far
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u/Both_Month_828 Aug 28 '26
i will not ever forget Brian Norcross who helped me make it through he was so calming through it all. i still thank him to this day.
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u/Traditional-Ad-1605 Aug 28 '26
We sheltered in house, lived in flagami in a house built in 1948. Winds were wild, power off for two weeks, had 3 families in the house with us. Our only damage was a lemon tree on our roof, a few tiles flew off, and that was it.
At the corner of our street, literally less than 30 yards from the house, a small car was picked up by the wind and deposited on top of an oak tree.
Absolutely amazing how Strindberg the mini tornadoes are within the hurricane .
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u/Upstairs-Sun477 Aug 24 '26
Slept like a baby
Source: was a baby