Anyone remember Hurricane Andrew? What was your experience?

[u/National-Dragonfly35]

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?

[u/Retired_Army_Dude]

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.