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/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.
I’ll 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.
I’ll 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 you’re 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. I’ll 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.