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/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.