I lived in Homestead, near the Air Force Base when Hurricane Andrew struck. The storm was not supposed to hit us directly, so we did not evacuate. My father bolted sheets of plywood on the windows and put the Bahama shutters down on the rest of the windows. I may have only been 7 at the time, but I remember that day and the days that followed so well. My grandparents came up from Key Largo to stay with us; they also brought one of their friends. It was a such a beautiful day. We went in the pool and I remember looking up at the blue sky with fluffy white clouds thinking "if we have weather like this now, the storm could not be that bad"...so wrong. We had spaghetti and meatballs that night for dinner and then went to bed. I slept on the floor in my parents room. My mother woke me up and told me to move to another part of the room because the dresser was shaking (it was next to the wall). The howling was so loud and high pitched. We all moved into the guest bedroom and that was when the winds started to worsen. My grandmother had me under the comforter telling me Angels were watching out for us. My Father and grandfather (6'2 and 6'4) had all of their weight against the door. My mother had her hand on the wall that was swaying (my father later told us that was because the roof was lifting). Then air was being sucked out from under the door. It was like a wind tunnel. All you could hear was the intense wind, exactly like a freight train, glass smashing, loud thuds. Then the eye came with complete silence. When it returned, 4 of us gathered in the hall closet, which was tiny. My mother was screaming prayers at the top of her lungs, but you could barely hear it over the sound of the storm and its destruction. My father and grandfather stayed in the hallway braving the winds coming through the house. When I came out of the hall closet, the first thing I saw, with the faint rays of daylight, was foliage on the new carpet they had just installed 2 months before the storm. The above ground pool (that was filled with water) was GONE; not one scrap of metal or the material. It picked it up and put it a couple of blocks away from us; of course in pieces! We couldn't live in the house because the ceiling kept on falling due to the holes in the roof and the rain after the storm. My mother had filled the bath tubs with water, which was the only way we could flush the toilet and wash clothes. We were lucky, our next door neighbors had the truss of the roof fall on them, but they survived because they were under the mattress. My father got on top of what was left of our roof and he said nothing was taller than him. EVERYTHING was leveled. He tried to give us some normalcy by doing a BBQ on the front lawn. He got the patio furniture we had stored in our home and borrowed a tent from the next door neighbors. When you would look up from the immediate vicinity, it felt like having a BBQ in HELL. No power, no water, not even a roof to live under. When we had to get something in the house, we would have to run. I ran in to get clothes, and right as I left the room, the entire ceiling fell. When we tried to sleep (everyone but my father) at night, you could hear the stray dogs or looters around the tent. Our neighbor had a huge spot light and shot gun that kept most of the looters out. My skin was so itchy and dirty from the insulation that dropped from the ceiling. But, as I said, we were lucky. We survived and the house was standing. To this day, Hurricanes freak me out. I almost had a heart attack when Irma came through (we live near FT Lauderdale, FL, but inland). The whistling of the wind and tornado warnings had me setting up the closet (the only place with no windows) for another Andrew with a survival container and a blowup mattress! My husband was laughing at me at the time. I still have not shown him the pictures of our house in Homestead. My heart goes out to all of those who have seen destruction like this. You can have it described to you and see pictures, but it will never be the same as experiencing it, as with all things in life. Thank you for uploading this video; it was a real trip down hurricane memory lane. Sometimes you forget the things you have survived when life can get tough. It has made me thankful all over again for being alive and where I am in life. Hurricane Andrew changed my life forever.God Bless the Bahamas. They have lived through something worse than Andrew and so many more lives were lost.And last, please heed hurricane warnings. They are not a joke or an excuse to miss work, school, or have a hurricane party. Please be safe everyone and sorry this was so long LOL!
This was an amazing story to read. Often when we have hurricanes coming through Florida, the schools where I live (Georgia) shut down so people can come shelter in them. We normally just get rain and some wind. We also have family in Florida that sometimes comes to stay with us if its gonna be really bad, bc they live near Daytona Beach
@@abbie51304vlogs I'm not ready for the season again. Reporters are saying this season for hurricanes and tornadoes are going to be even worse for Florida than it was last year. 7 hurricanes and 4 major hurricanes and over 20 named storms. I hate hurricane prep and my dad's house has HUNDREDS and THOUSANDS of trees around it.
I can not imagine this. If it wasn’t for the Gulf Stream, I would not be here today. The reason for this: Either Dorian or Isaias would’ve directly hit me.
Some friendly advice. If you are requested or ordered to evacuate, EVACUATE!! Don't put yours and other's lives at risk. You can rebuild a home. You can not rebuild a life lost.
that sign is very funny🤣 i think the employees of that restaurant where trying to fin the humor in a very serious and scary situation. maybe that gave them some comfort !!! i don't blame anyone for being scared of hurricane!! I live in Missouri we get tornadoes not hurricanes it looks scary enough on TV i'm sure it really scary for those who live in hurricane prone states or countries.
Not mentioned in this video was the fact that tons of shady developers in the 1970s and 1980s had built substandard homes throughout south Florida, the goal was just to get them built and sold in the quickest and cheapest ways possible. That’s so many of them we’re completely flattened.
Hurricane Andrew took my family's 3 1/2 acres of orange, mango trees away. They were planted 43 years before every single one of them were uprooted. My grandparents lived in Homestead. We all moved out of Miami after that. I now live in tornado alley and I'm ok with that.
@@chdreturns Yeah right! Hurricanes cover a much bigger area of destruction than tornadoes do! Whereas a tornado might take out a city, but a hurricane is so large it can take out a whole state or even several! Also, a lot of flooding occurs with hurricanes!
not quite hurricanes dont suck things up and fly them around but they do blow them over and a ef-4 is alot more deadlier and dangerous then a hurricane in my opinnion but while ur running to go underground for a tornado to cross over you in a hurricane ur trying to get higher away from the storm surge alot of dfferences in these 2 killer storms and to me what makes a tornado worse is a tornado is unpredictable and u might beable to get a 15 minute warning and sometimes no warnings at all a hurricane has almost a week of warning and atleast 2 to 3 days of a definite warning so people have time to evacuate with a tornado our weather men and woman cant give us that and thats why we have alot of deaths in a hurricane either someone cant evacuate or they are being stupid and dont believe that a hurricane isnt as bad as our weather guys are telling them that it is i live in ga and i lived in florida so im use to hurricanes and been through them and usually every hurricane documentary i see someone says they choose not to evacuate because they dont believe its gonna get that bad and when it comes true they wished they woulda evacuated..a home is replacable a life isnt so to make that choice to stay yeah thats stupidity to me and to me thats the samething as someone saying oh ill be fine in my trailor while this tornado comes at me
I used to want to experience a powerful hurricane. For some reason I thought I was better than everyone who had suffered through these catastrophes. This was humbling. Very very humbling. And heartbreaking. I hopped right off my high horse after watching this. And what makes it worse, is I always thought, "you're thoughtless and irresponsible for trying to stick this out" and then I realized that I was trying to be one of those people. This brought me back down to reality. My heart goes out to everyone who goes through these tragedies. And I'm so sorry to have been so arrogant as to have thought that I could do any better.
Not that fun,live in new Orleans,seen alot of hurricanes ,Katrina was flooding when the leaves broke in 2005,the storm went east ,last year hurricane Ida cat 4 almost 5 ,it was like a freight train coming threw the wind was howling,so erie,the eye shifted closer went 30 Miles West of here,that's when shit got bad,I saw debree flying everywhere,the wind was howling like 140 miles wind gusting , terrible when the power goes out,bad storm 1 of the worst ever to hit Louisiana
I am an Andrew survivor. One of the things they don't really mention in this video is how quickly the storm intensified. Peopel weren't "irresonsible" for staying behind; they just had no time. Imagine; on Friday night, it was a minor storm. By Sunday morning, it had gotten more serious. By Sunday night the storm was on top of us. Less than a day to make preparations, secure your house, board up (hurricane prep takes time as any Floridian knows), then find a place to go. On top of all that, no one had any knowledge of what a bad storm was really like. There was no video, no social media, no historic reports from recent survivors. The last bad storm prior to Andrew was Hurricane Hugo in the Carolinas in 1989, but Florida hadn't had a bad storm in decades. I would never ever ride out a Cat4+ storm again, but the situation was different back then.
@@Drew-C- hurricane Ida sucked last year ,cat 4 it just got power overnight the next day it was a 4 I was like holy shit,when it came to shore the eyewall shifted about 35 miles West of new Orleans where I'm from ,it was just pure destruction wind damage,and that wind was howling ,never again will I stay for a 4 or 5 ,didn't know it would intensify
My childhood best friend's family was from Homestead, they moved away after Hurricane Andrew. They had evacuated and came back to a pile of debris where their house had been. The only thing standing was one tiny interior bathroom, the photos were insane.
It's incredible that mom knew to tell her daughter to close the shower curtain! Mother's instincts right there. I still wouldn't let my kid leave the room without me, no way.
I was only 3 years old at the time when it hit my home state of Florida. Till this day I remember where I was and what I was doing (sitting on my mama’s lap, clinging to her) while my mom rocked my sister and i in her arms. I do remember the electricity being out. Our home was shaking, I do remember the shaking taking place. I’m over 30 years old now, I still remember that hurricane. It was a storm like no other.
I was only 12 but a lot of this is seared in to my memory. Everyone in our house, a dozen people, came awake at once at 4am when the pressure dropped, and we just sat in the living room for 3 hours, listening to the wind howl and who knows what hitting our shutters. We lived in Kendall drive, which was the line of demarcation for an evacuation order, and we were on the side that didn't have to leave. It's a miracle we did ok, just the way our house was positioned in our complex, but so much of the rest of the complex was flattened. It's hard to understand now how sort of limited weather tracking technology was at that time, but we really had no idea how bad that storm was going to be, nobody did. In retrospect, it's probably better that we didn't know, because it would have been absolute panic and where would everyone have gone?
I was 10 years old on vacation staying at a beautiful hotel with my older brother in Miami Beach when we suddenly got evacuated. I didn’t think much of it as we took refuge at my aunt and uncles house in the city of Kendall…… that experience has never left my mind.
Not always. If you're in the southern hemisphere it's the opposite. also when a storm hits the northern gulf of Mexico the first half is always the worst
People in homestead still talk about Andrew and what they went through. Its gotten much bigger and more developed since then too ,poised to be another Kendall in the next 10 years, so I think everyone here is just really worried about another Andrew coming through and blowing it all away again.
I can't imagine how frightening this must have been. The river that runs through our farm flooded our wheat and much of our pasture land. It was a loss but nothing like living through something like this. So tragic about Ian. God Bless.
Homestead loses their air force base but the city of homestead gained Homestead Miami speedway. The racetrack broke ground on August 24 1993 , one year anniversary of hurricane Andrew made landfall and was the spark for people who lived in Homestead to rebuild their city.
I live in Florida, Jacksonville area. I remember this Hurricane, Andrew was a BEAST of a storm. Even though it was “small” for a storm it packed a massive punch and reminded me of a buzzsaw coming towards south Florida. I know we held a canned food drive and gathered supplies like blankets and other items needed at my elementary school and we shipped it down south to help the kids out down there.
I live about 2 hours North of where Andrew slammed into the Florida coast. We got rain and wind up here but it wasn't much worse than just a tropical storm. I kept up with the progress of the storm on TV and my heart sank. About a month, month and a half maybe I was part of a construction crew. Our crew went down to help people rebuild. There was National Guard all over the place, curfews, and police everywhere you turned. I did go down to Homestead and I can't even explain seeing destruction first hand. It was terrifying and knowing that people were in those houses is, I can't even find a word. I'm glad that I gave back in some small way to help some families get back to normal. To have been part of rebuilding their lives. Many years later in 2004, my apartment and everything and it was destroyed by Hurricane Jeanne.
One good thing about this storm is that building codes got much stronger. No more stapled on roofs. Best walls are concrete block filled with grout and rebar. Hollow concrete block walls are not strong enough. Make sure the roof has a strong steel frame that is bolted to those walls, so a strong upward force can't tear it off.
@@margui6224 ok who gives a shit step son is his son he obviously cared about him a lot. Just another I know it all let me feel important telling others where there wrong you’re about a year to late to 😂😂😂
"INTERESTING FACTS FROM AN ANDREW SURVIVOR" I lived in Cutler Ridge about 8 miles north of Homestead and was 23 years old at the time hurricane hit. I rode out the storm at my in-laws house inside if a tiny interior bathroom There were 6 of us that included myself, my 2 toddlers, my then husband, mother and father in law. It took the all the strength of my husband and father in law had just to hold the door closed because the wind was so strong that it was trying to suck the door out. The only thing I hear is wind and glass breaking all around us. We stayed in that bathroom for over 3 hours until the storm passed. We did not get the eye of the storm. So there was no rest for us just nothing but wind, rain, thunder, lightning, and the sound of glass breaking. We had no electricity for almost 2 months. It was unbearably hot, we had no access to gas, ATM'S, or anything else that required electricity. There was so much debris, nails, and broken glass everywhere that everyone was getting flat tires. The wind meter at homestead air Force Base clocked a wind gust of 216 miles per hour before it broke. I went to check on my mom and brothers who lived about 4 miles from where I rode out the storm in the heart of Cutler Ridge. As we drove down US1 people from West Perrine were looting all of the stores and businesses that were damaged by Andrew. As we drove by Kmart I saw people pushing carts full of merchandise and riding new bicycles that they looted. I saw a guy pushing a shopping cart with a cash register that he took from a convenience store that was being looted. Cutler Ridge mall suffered major damage and the national guard was supposed to be guarding the stores and instead some of the national guard soldiers looted the jewelry stores. South Miami-Dade county was put under a dusk till dawn curfew because it was so dark from not having electricity that home owners stayed up all night toting guns to protect their property from looters. County officials estimated there were so much debris and garbage that it would take about 18 months to haul it away. Many houses were completely leveled to the concrete foundation. In the first few days after the storm there was no help from any government agency or FEMA, any survivors were left to fend for themselves. People were running out of water and food. Government officials were slow to respond, and it took approximately 5 days after the storm for help to arrive to our area with much needed supplies. Anheuser-Busch donated hundreds of thousands of cans of drinking water that was processed at the bottling plant. Dade County Emergency Management Director Kate Hale to famously exclaim at a nationally televised news conference, "Where in the hell is the cavalry on this one? They keep saying we're going to get supplies. For God's sake, where are they?" Almost immediately, President Bush promised, "Help is on the way," and mobile kitchens, food,. and tents. The national guard set up 5 tent cities to house the more than an estimated more than 130,000 plus people who were now homeless because over 60,000 homes we're completely destroyed and leveled. There was no school for any of the kids because most of them were damaged by the storm and again there was no electricity. South Miami-Dade county looked like a bomb hit it It's something I'll never forget as long as I live.
I remember being little and seeing pictures of Hurricane Andrew aftermath and being PETRIFIED of hurricanes. My family always told me that was a one off thing, it won't happen like that again. Fast forward 15 years, Charley, Irma, Harvey, Katrina, etc. And I'm just like 👀 yall lied to me.
I was 16 and lived through this, life was not the same for many years. grocery stores operating with only emergency lights and taking credit cards not electronically but the old fashioned way and using calculators to charge you with manual receipts. crazy times. watch hurricane Andrew as it happened on TH-cam, it's pretty much spot on
Imagine being in a low ef4 tornado for hours and hours. These people are lucky enough to be alive and hopefully smart enough to never get caught in another one
I am astounded when I heard her say flippantly we had a couple days of food lol. These people don’t have a clue a cat5storm is nothing to shirk off. Cant say i feel sorry for those that have the means but did not leave.
Between the mattresses and only two days of food which probably would have to be cooked on electric lol or gas LOL blew my mind. It’s people really we’re living in La La Land. I feel sorry for the people who don’t have the means and are forced to stay. People who stayed just because Nada
I've lived in FL my whole life between being born and raised in Miami and living in Orlando. Hurricanes are actually pretty fun when they're cat 3 and under but higher than that, evacuation is a must because our homes are not built for this! Believe me, I've been in many storms to know this!
I went through several down there, starting with Andrew in '92. My personal rule became anything over 100mph forecast for my area I would leave. Never did have to leave but I think it was Ivan in '04? that I was holding our bending inward sliding glass door back with one hand and holding a drink in the other. Andrew was something else though; I watched the entire Dade County power grid explode from my house in Hollywood. About two hours of blue balls (no pun) of explosion on the horizon. Of course few had video cameras then, shame. The wind at our house actually picked me off the ground as a 13 year old and set me down a few feet from where I'd been standing. I decided to stay on the south facing porch after that.
I remember when Andrew hit Florida. I was only 11 going on 12 a few weeks later. The first images that I saw on the news was like a nuclear bomb had gone off. Andrew was no joke and it was pissed off and it didn't care who's lives it took and who's houses it destroyed. Thank God most people evacuated cause the death toll could've been a lot worse. Andrew leveled block after block after block and people who stayed just couldn't believe the damage it caused. I truly feel bad for the Zinn family. They survived Andrew and then 9yrs later their son Ian drowns. That is so depressing for the family to deal with Andrew and losing their home and then lose their son 9yrs later.
I feel like I should be pissed my dad decided to take me (who was 7) to visit my grandparents in Miami when this hit. To this day, the craziest thing I remember from my childhood
While we were going through Andrew,our home in Ohio,burned to the ground. Andrew was something I never want to EVER go through that again. After Andrew,we drove to see who of our friends might need us,and it was bad,no electric,a whole lot of damage from water. Homestead was leveled though. I was so heart broken for them.
Summer of 92 my grandparents were planning to take me to florida to go to this state park that i loved going to it has a cold spring and caves not sure the name anyways. We live in alabama so the trip wasn't going to take too long. Half way cross the state i start to have this bad feeling and it made me very upset and i started crying and begging them to turn around and go back home. Close to the state line they finally agreed and turned back around and we went back home...as soon as we walked through the door they told me off and then turned on the tv... It was the news talking about hurricane andrew heading towards the exact place we were going... After that they trusted my instincts on any future trips
I remember only a few things from Andrew in Broward when I was 3/4. I remember the clouds going so fast in the afternoon as the strong was coming into Miami... I’ve never seen them move so fast. Then my dad put up the last board and it got dark. It came in at night....That’s is the scariest shit ever. The sound the wind makes as it screams through the trees. Til this day I don’t like hearing wind blowing through trees. 😱 oh and the next day our patio was crushed by a huge tree that fell on the house. We have pictures. Super scary now.
I lived through Andrew. I was 27 and chose to ride out the Hurricane in South Miami. I was sure the hurricane would head north when it hit the Gulf Sream, ut it just heded striaight towards Miami. We did not board up the windows so you were able to see the rain blowing sideways whe the lightning hit nearby and the constant soutnd of the wind sounded like two freight trains zooming by the house on both sides. The sound of the roof creaking fearing the roof would peal off at any minute. Yet the worst part was the weeks afterwards with no power or water and insade traffic due to no street lights and debris and strand cars with multiple flat tires, cement power poles snapped to the ground. All the trees bend down with no leaves. It was like being in a war zone almost.
I wasn't born yet but nearly my entire family was living in Miami at the time. My parents and uncles/aunts have a bunch of photos of them and their destroyed homes except for my parents - our house was the only standing house on our street with minimal damage compared to others. Very lucky. This storm hit on my soon to be birthday (Aug 29), so wild.
People in the US should learn to build their houses better. Those wood and cardboard walls are just ridiculous. Over here, the first floor, the basement, and the carrying structures of the second floor are basically monolithic concrete blocks with 40cm of isolation wrapped around them on the outside.
Y'all have a government that cares about you. Us? Nope. Our constructors choose the cheapest building material and not the safest. Most of the new homes that are built would be destroyed in even an EF3 tornado.
I remember Irma clear as day itself. We had been getting word about this storm for almost *weeks* now. I wanted to stay with my mom during the storm but I ended up heading to Lousiana (first we stopped at Tallahassee but then Irma turned and headed straight for us) with my grandma. When we got back to Florida it was almost as a BOMB went off. There was debris everywhere.
Yep, I went through irma. It didnt hit us directly, we were in west miami so we were more on the outside of the hurricane. Regardless, when we went outside it was crazy. Trees snapped in half, power lines on the streets, at night there was obviously no lights and it looked like a ghost town. The craziest part is that mcdonalds was open right after the hurricane, those crazy bastards
Driving in a hurricane in a car is dangerous. The roads could have blocked them from driving and sitting in the open when the car windows can easily break. They should have been driving in an armored bank vehicle with bulletproof windows.
My dad was in this one, and we're Canadian, lol. Anyway, he said he wanted to go out and play in the storm, but then he saw a giant tree get picked up and thrown away like it was just a stick. He decided to stay inside after that. That's pretty much the only thing he said about this storm; I don't think he liked talking about it much. I wish I'd paid more attention to stories like that when I had the chance; he's been gone almost 11 years now and I don't even know what he was doing so far south :p
Last year I live in new Orleans hurricane Ida was bad ,cat 4 almost a 5 ,1 of the worst ones ever to hit Louisiana,worse than Katrina,Katrina was flooding,this storm was pure destruction and wind,the eyewall shifted a little east went 35 miles West of new Orleans,that's when shit got bad,the wind was howling sounding like a freight train,debree flying everywhere sounded like a big f4 tornado out their ,that wind was erie
I lived in North Ft Myers for Andrew. I was 11 years old. An ariel shot of the state looked like god took a giant lawn mower and just ran straight across Fla.
These things are scary Hurricanes are life threatning even though i was never in Andrew imagine how many lives those people gave to Andrew and all the money being spent to rebuild
There's a kind of poetic justice in selfish parents who refuse to evacuate, only to have themselves and their children horribly suffer throughout the duration of the storm. Could have not gone through all that. Maybe heed the evacuation warnings? What ignorance.
The mother was a hero for saving her daughter when she went in to use the bathroom and reminded her to close the shower curtain durning hurricane Andrew she basically saved her from a potentially severe to fatal injury
17:05 The Zinn family's neighborhood easily had top wind gusts of no less than 300 mph if not even topping 325 mph, from the kind of destruction it did to that concrete house and that boat.
I was living in central NY when Andrew hit, my dad and Uncle owned a condo on Siesta Key, they had damage there and we got effects of the storm in NY also.
Jim Cantore is the MAN!! People, if authorities order you to leave, then you need to LEAVE or write your name and Social Security number on your body so that, if authorities find your body, they can identify you.
I think this was the worst because of the Tornados, massive amounts of tornados within a hurricane, if it had been in another spot where storm surge would be evenb worse it would of put it over the top but I would never ever leave it off the top 4 or 5 storms if not even 3 or 2... It is up there with Katrina and somebody who wiould say they were in it and it was worse, I would beleive it... I wonder if anybody is out there whom surived thru Katrina and Andrew...
We rode out a horrid storm in a cinderblock hotel that had a generator. My kids and I were comfortable- running water, food, comfortable sleep. But trying to go home the next day we had to wait for the voluneers with chainsaws to cut a path on the highway, so it was late. Then had to wait 4 days to get power restored. I was just so happy for that hotel. Adults want to hang at home and ride it out ok. But for the life of me I'll never understand these dudes that want to make their family/kids take that risk with them. smh It's sickening.
Been there done that! I lived in a 10-story apartment complex across from the Dadeland mall. The damage was incredible but nothing like Homestead. The morning of the 25th a friend and I went for a walk to look around. I noticed an American flag lying on the ground from a KFC restaurant. I collected the flag and have it to this day.
God I’m so glad I’m in the northern/mid parts of Florida (Sebastian specifically) As by the time hurricane get up to the area I’m in there so much weaker and the most damage I’ve ever experienced was power and mild flooding that didn’t do much at all.
Hurricane 🌀🌀 hurricane Andrew let's go hold down the 🏡🏠 yep what the hell is hurricane proof the time on the boat ⛵ the hurricane 🌀 Is there a hurricane party 🎉
i use to live in Florida and i still dont understand why people who are in places that can come in direct contact with the storms stay and try to ride it out when they are this strong i get not having the money to go but i dont get why they stay if they dont got nowhere to go there are storm shelters and some places inland that will open there doors to the ones who dont have the money nor nowhere to go and if its transportation well then the government needs to start up a thing where church buses or greyhounds will take them for free to a safety area
It always pisses me off to no end when people ignore a mandatory evacuation when they tell you to get out listen don't be stupid it's even worse when you put your kids life's in danger evacuate for your kids sake let them live even though you want to be stupid with your own life I don't feel bad for the people that are stupid and stay behind during a hurricane especially a strong one your daughter suffers from asma and you still don't evacuate what terrible parents
I lived in Homestead, near the Air Force Base when Hurricane Andrew struck. The storm was not supposed to hit us directly, so we did not evacuate. My father bolted sheets of plywood on the windows and put the Bahama shutters down on the rest of the windows. I may have only been 7 at the time, but I remember that day and the days that followed so well. My grandparents came up from Key Largo to stay with us; they also brought one of their friends. It was a such a beautiful day. We went in the pool and I remember looking up at the blue sky with fluffy white clouds thinking "if we have weather like this now, the storm could not be that bad"...so wrong. We had spaghetti and meatballs that night for dinner and then went to bed. I slept on the floor in my parents room. My mother woke me up and told me to move to another part of the room because the dresser was shaking (it was next to the wall). The howling was so loud and high pitched. We all moved into the guest bedroom and that was when the winds started to worsen. My grandmother had me under the comforter telling me Angels were watching out for us. My Father and grandfather (6'2 and 6'4) had all of their weight against the door. My mother had her hand on the wall that was swaying (my father later told us that was because the roof was lifting). Then air was being sucked out from under the door. It was like a wind tunnel. All you could hear was the intense wind, exactly like a freight train, glass smashing, loud thuds. Then the eye came with complete silence. When it returned, 4 of us gathered in the hall closet, which was tiny. My mother was screaming prayers at the top of her lungs, but you could barely hear it over the sound of the storm and its destruction. My father and grandfather stayed in the hallway braving the winds coming through the house. When I came out of the hall closet, the first thing I saw, with the faint rays of daylight, was foliage on the new carpet they had just installed 2 months before the storm. The above ground pool (that was filled with water) was GONE; not one scrap of metal or the material. It picked it up and put it a couple of blocks away from us; of course in pieces! We couldn't live in the house because the ceiling kept on falling due to the holes in the roof and the rain after the storm. My mother had filled the bath tubs with water, which was the only way we could flush the toilet and wash clothes. We were lucky, our next door neighbors had the truss of the roof fall on them, but they survived because they were under the mattress. My father got on top of what was left of our roof and he said nothing was taller than him. EVERYTHING was leveled. He tried to give us some normalcy by doing a BBQ on the front lawn. He got the patio furniture we had stored in our home and borrowed a tent from the next door neighbors. When you would look up from the immediate vicinity, it felt like having a BBQ in HELL. No power, no water, not even a roof to live under. When we had to get something in the house, we would have to run. I ran in to get clothes, and right as I left the room, the entire ceiling fell. When we tried to sleep (everyone but my father) at night, you could hear the stray dogs or looters around the tent. Our neighbor had a huge spot light and shot gun that kept most of the looters out. My skin was so itchy and dirty from the insulation that dropped from the ceiling. But, as I said, we were lucky. We survived and the house was standing. To this day, Hurricanes freak me out. I almost had a heart attack when Irma came through (we live near FT Lauderdale, FL, but inland). The whistling of the wind and tornado warnings had me setting up the closet (the only place with no windows) for another Andrew with a survival container and a blowup mattress! My husband was laughing at me at the time. I still have not shown him the pictures of our house in Homestead. My heart goes out to all of those who have seen destruction like this. You can have it described to you and see pictures, but it will never be the same as experiencing it, as with all things in life. Thank you for uploading this video; it was a real trip down hurricane memory lane. Sometimes you forget the things you have survived when life can get tough. It has made me thankful all over again for being alive and where I am in life. Hurricane Andrew changed my life forever.God Bless the Bahamas. They have lived through something worse than Andrew and so many more lives were lost.And last, please heed hurricane warnings. They are not a joke or an excuse to miss work, school, or have a hurricane party. Please be safe everyone and sorry this was so long LOL!
Wow I loved reading this! Thank you for sharing your story. This comment deserves more likes and more attention. That is crazy what you went through.
My mom and dad were at SW 102 AV & SW 160 ST in Richmond Heights....the story that they told me about Andrew was unreal.
This was an amazing story to read. Often when we have hurricanes coming through Florida, the schools where I live (Georgia) shut down so people can come shelter in them. We normally just get rain and some wind. We also have family in Florida that sometimes comes to stay with us if its gonna be really bad, bc they live near Daytona Beach
@@abbie51304vlogs I'm not ready for the season again. Reporters are saying this season for hurricanes and tornadoes are going to be even worse for Florida than it was last year. 7 hurricanes and 4 major hurricanes and over 20 named storms. I hate hurricane prep and my dad's house has HUNDREDS and THOUSANDS of trees around it.
I can not imagine this. If it wasn’t for the Gulf Stream, I would not be here today. The reason for this: Either Dorian or Isaias would’ve directly hit me.
Some friendly advice. If you are requested or ordered to evacuate, EVACUATE!! Don't put yours and other's lives at risk. You can rebuild a home. You can not rebuild a life lost.
I'ts Florida bro we don't evacuate when there's a Hurricane
Hey I live in Tennessee and the hurricane aftermath here is crazy ( acecept tropical storm Laura. That was a disappointment)
@@woomy1907 is Nashville alright from that tornado? I live in North Carolina and get hit by alot of hurricanes
But what sucks about evacuation orders is that people always urge others to evacuate even during a weak storm
I so agree with you
Honestly i love the sign, "closed, andrew is coming for dinner" 🤣
You dont find a hurricane, like tornados, they find you instead
that sign is very funny🤣
i think the employees of that restaurant where trying to fin the humor in a very serious and scary situation.
maybe that gave them some comfort !!!
i don't blame anyone for being scared of hurricane!!
I live in Missouri we get tornadoes not hurricanes
it looks scary enough on TV i'm sure it really scary for those who live in hurricane prone states or countries.
Not mentioned in this video was the fact that tons of shady developers in the 1970s and 1980s had built substandard homes throughout south Florida, the goal was just to get them built and sold in the quickest and cheapest ways possible. That’s so many of them
we’re completely flattened.
RIP Ian Zinn. 😢
He died?
yes it said he drowned 9 years later :(
Only 26. So sad.
@user-wh5ir4fo4r unfortunately yeah
Hurricane Andrew took my family's 3 1/2 acres of orange, mango trees away. They were planted 43 years before every single one of them were uprooted. My grandparents lived in Homestead.
We all moved out of Miami after that.
I now live in tornado alley and I'm ok with that.
Honestly I'd rather take a Hurricane than a Tornado as hurricanes are easier to predict, and evacuate from.
@@chdreturns Yeah right! Hurricanes cover a much bigger area of destruction than tornadoes do! Whereas a tornado might take out a city, but a hurricane is so large it can take out a whole state or even several! Also, a lot of flooding occurs with hurricanes!
@@leonardszubinski4709 yep. Doggone hurricane dorian!! Hurricane's can drop multiple tornadoes as well!!
I would gladly deal with a hurricane over a random ass tornado with win wayyyy stronger than-hurricanes. As a Floridian.
What state in TA do you live in?
That poor horse! Breaks my heart, all the animals that died in this storm.
Rebecca Paquette same
Rebecca Paquette that horse😭😭😭
Yeah and the people
Hurricane Andrew was literally like a very large EF-4 tornado. Just incredibly powerful from a wind standpoint. Probably many many gusts over 200 mph.
not quite hurricanes dont suck things up and fly them around but they do blow them over and a ef-4 is alot more deadlier and dangerous then a hurricane in my opinnion but while ur running to go underground for a tornado to cross over you in a hurricane ur trying to get higher away from the storm surge alot of dfferences in these 2 killer storms and to me what makes a tornado worse is a tornado is unpredictable and u might beable to get a 15 minute warning and sometimes no warnings at all a hurricane has almost a week of warning and atleast 2 to 3 days of a definite warning so people have time to evacuate with a tornado our weather men and woman cant give us that and thats why we have alot of deaths in a hurricane either someone cant evacuate or they are being stupid and dont believe that a hurricane isnt as bad as our weather guys are telling them that it is i live in ga and i lived in florida so im use to hurricanes and been through them and usually every hurricane documentary i see someone says they choose not to evacuate because they dont believe its gonna get that bad and when it comes true they wished they woulda evacuated..a home is replacable a life isnt so to make that choice to stay yeah thats stupidity to me and to me thats the samething as someone saying oh ill be fine in my trailor while this tornado comes at me
I think it was a 5
@@sashek8451 it was
By the damage caused I would say EF2 or EF3 depending on where you are looking.
@@basharal-assad7987 no, higher than that
I've watched probably 15 of these in the past few days and I keep being promised my local forecast, and yet no local forecast comes.
Yeah lol
...... I couldn't have thought of something better to say myself
What?
lol
@@commiehunter733I love that picture lol
I used to want to experience a powerful hurricane. For some reason I thought I was better than everyone who had suffered through these catastrophes. This was humbling. Very very humbling. And heartbreaking. I hopped right off my high horse after watching this.
And what makes it worse, is I always thought, "you're thoughtless and irresponsible for trying to stick this out" and then I realized that I was trying to be one of those people. This brought me back down to reality.
My heart goes out to everyone who goes through these tragedies. And I'm so sorry to have been so arrogant as to have thought that I could do any better.
You're okay, just the fact that you can admit to being wrong means you're not arrogant! Best wishes from Idaho.
that is really awesome of you to realize and admit to that. I commend you. the world needs more people like you. Peace
Not that fun,live in new Orleans,seen alot of hurricanes ,Katrina was flooding when the leaves broke in 2005,the storm went east ,last year hurricane Ida cat 4 almost 5 ,it was like a freight train coming threw the wind was howling,so erie,the eye shifted closer went 30 Miles West of here,that's when shit got bad,I saw debree flying everywhere,the wind was howling like 140 miles wind gusting , terrible when the power goes out,bad storm 1 of the worst ever to hit Louisiana
I am an Andrew survivor. One of the things they don't really mention in this video is how quickly the storm intensified. Peopel weren't "irresonsible" for staying behind; they just had no time.
Imagine; on Friday night, it was a minor storm. By Sunday morning, it had gotten more serious. By Sunday night the storm was on top of us. Less than a day to make preparations, secure your house, board up (hurricane prep takes time as any Floridian knows), then find a place to go. On top of all that, no one had any knowledge of what a bad storm was really like. There was no video, no social media, no historic reports from recent survivors. The last bad storm prior to Andrew was Hurricane Hugo in the Carolinas in 1989, but Florida hadn't had a bad storm in decades.
I would never ever ride out a Cat4+ storm again, but the situation was different back then.
@@Drew-C- hurricane Ida sucked last year ,cat 4 it just got power overnight the next day it was a 4 I was like holy shit,when it came to shore the eyewall shifted about 35 miles West of new Orleans where I'm from ,it was just pure destruction wind damage,and that wind was howling ,never again will I stay for a 4 or 5 ,didn't know it would intensify
Poor Ian....just wanted to part of it all.
My childhood best friend's family was from Homestead, they moved away after Hurricane Andrew. They had evacuated and came back to a pile of debris where their house had been. The only thing standing was one tiny interior bathroom, the photos were insane.
It's incredible that mom knew to tell her daughter to close the shower curtain! Mother's instincts right there. I still wouldn't let my kid leave the room without me, no way.
I would have told my kid to stay put and pee on the floor if she needed to. No one would be out from under that matress.
what does the shower curtain do
@@grammarlyworshipper1819 the shower curtain kept the glass from spraying onto the kid.
@@Mink_Tracks ohh thats smart
@@grammarlyworshipper1819 very smart. I think it was natural mothers instinct :)
So weird the kid who recorded the worst Hurricane in Florida history was the name for the Hurricane that took the top spot. Insane
Simulation confirmed
As I'm watching this hurricane Dorian is heading for florida.
Get ready and stay safe! Greetings from Puerto Rico.
@@ጂዩዝ I live in Texas but thank you anyways.
@@randiekay4994 Ohh ok lol nvm
Mee tooooo.....
But I'm in florida 😟
I was only 3 years old at the time when it hit my home state of Florida. Till this day I remember where I was and what I was doing (sitting on my mama’s lap, clinging to her) while my mom rocked my sister and i in her arms. I do remember the electricity being out. Our home was shaking, I do remember the shaking taking place. I’m over 30 years old now, I still remember that hurricane. It was a storm like no other.
I was only 12 but a lot of this is seared in to my memory. Everyone in our house, a dozen people, came awake at once at 4am when the pressure dropped, and we just sat in the living room for 3 hours, listening to the wind howl and who knows what hitting our shutters. We lived in Kendall drive, which was the line of demarcation for an evacuation order, and we were on the side that didn't have to leave. It's a miracle we did ok, just the way our house was positioned in our complex, but so much of the rest of the complex was flattened. It's hard to understand now how sort of limited weather tracking technology was at that time, but we really had no idea how bad that storm was going to be, nobody did. In retrospect, it's probably better that we didn't know, because it would have been absolute panic and where would everyone have gone?
I was 10 years old on vacation staying at a beautiful hotel with my older brother in Miami Beach when we suddenly got evacuated. I didn’t think much of it as we took refuge at my aunt and uncles house in the city of Kendall…… that experience has never left my mind.
Rest In Peace Ian 🙏🏾❤️
He died?
@UNIT GAMEX Yeah he drowned 😢
@@TheDiamondFish when?
@@jaspersversion 9 years after andrew
RIP Ian
😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢
Like a tornado, the back part of the hurricane is always the more dangerous part
Yep
Im not ready to find that out.
Nothing like a tornado
Everything is already weakened in the first half
Not always.
If you're in the southern hemisphere it's the opposite.
also when a storm hits the northern gulf of Mexico the first half is always the worst
People in homestead still talk about Andrew and what they went through. Its gotten much bigger and more developed since then too ,poised to be another Kendall in the next 10 years, so I think everyone here is just really worried about another Andrew coming through and blowing it all away again.
Yeah. Everyone that left won’t recognize homestead whatsoever. It’s now like Kendall and expensive!
I can't imagine how frightening this must have been. The river that runs through our farm flooded our wheat and much of our pasture land. It was a loss but nothing like living through something like this. So tragic about Ian. God Bless.
Homestead loses their air force base but the city of homestead gained Homestead Miami speedway. The racetrack broke ground on August 24 1993 , one year anniversary of
hurricane Andrew made landfall and was the spark for people who lived in Homestead to rebuild their city.
I live in Florida, Jacksonville area. I remember this Hurricane, Andrew was a BEAST of a storm. Even though it was “small” for a storm it packed a massive punch and reminded me of a buzzsaw coming towards south Florida. I know we held a canned food drive and gathered supplies like blankets and other items needed at my elementary school and we shipped it down south to help the kids out down there.
I still cry when I see footage of Andrew. We lived in Country Walk.Rebuilt and after 28 years we retired up near Orlando this year!!
I live about 2 hours North of where Andrew slammed into the Florida coast. We got rain and wind up here but it wasn't much worse than just a tropical storm. I kept up with the progress of the storm on TV and my heart sank. About a month, month and a half maybe I was part of a construction crew. Our crew went down to help people rebuild. There was National Guard all over the place, curfews, and police everywhere you turned. I did go down to Homestead and I can't even explain seeing destruction first hand. It was terrifying and knowing that people were in those houses is, I can't even find a word. I'm glad that I gave back in some small way to help some families get back to normal. To have been part of rebuilding their lives. Many years later in 2004, my apartment and everything and it was destroyed by Hurricane Jeanne.
It’s 2022 and I still get tears in my eyes watching this.
One good thing about this storm is that building codes got much stronger. No more stapled on roofs.
Best walls are concrete block filled with grout and rebar. Hollow concrete block walls are not strong enough. Make sure the roof has a strong steel frame that is bolted to those walls, so a strong upward force can't tear it off.
That’s very sad about that mans son passing I’m only a year older I’m 27. And thank god everyday to still be alive
He was not that man’s son. Ian was his stepson.
@@margui6224 ok who gives a shit step son is his son he obviously cared about him a lot. Just another I know it all let me feel important telling others where there wrong you’re about a year to late to 😂😂😂
"INTERESTING FACTS FROM AN ANDREW SURVIVOR"
I lived in Cutler Ridge about 8 miles north of Homestead and was 23 years old at the time hurricane hit.
I rode out the storm at my in-laws house inside if a tiny interior bathroom
There were 6 of us that included myself, my 2 toddlers, my then husband, mother and father in law.
It took the all the strength of my husband and father in law had just to hold the door closed because the wind was so strong that it was trying to suck the door out.
The only thing I hear is wind and glass breaking all around us.
We stayed in that bathroom for over 3 hours until the storm passed.
We did not get the eye of the storm.
So there was no rest for us just nothing but wind, rain, thunder, lightning, and the sound of glass breaking.
We had no electricity for almost 2 months.
It was unbearably hot, we had no access to gas, ATM'S, or anything else that required electricity.
There was so much debris, nails, and broken glass everywhere that everyone was getting flat tires.
The wind meter at homestead air Force Base clocked a wind gust of 216 miles per hour before it broke.
I went to check on my mom and brothers who lived about 4 miles from where I rode out the storm in the heart of Cutler Ridge.
As we drove down US1 people from West Perrine were looting all of the stores and businesses that were damaged by Andrew.
As we drove by Kmart I saw people pushing carts full of merchandise and riding new bicycles that they looted.
I saw a guy pushing a shopping cart with a cash register that he took from a convenience store that was being looted.
Cutler Ridge mall suffered major damage and the national guard was supposed to be guarding the stores and instead some of the national guard soldiers looted the jewelry stores.
South Miami-Dade county was put under a dusk till dawn curfew because it was so dark from not having electricity that home owners stayed up all night toting guns to protect their property from looters.
County officials estimated there were so much debris and garbage that it would take about 18 months to haul it away.
Many houses were completely leveled to the concrete foundation.
In the first few days after the storm there was no help from any government agency or FEMA, any survivors were left to fend for themselves.
People were running out of water and food.
Government officials were slow to respond, and it took approximately 5 days after the storm for help to arrive to our area with much needed supplies.
Anheuser-Busch donated hundreds of thousands of cans of drinking water that was processed at the bottling plant.
Dade County Emergency Management Director Kate Hale to famously exclaim at a nationally televised news conference, "Where in the hell is the cavalry on this one? They keep saying we're going to get supplies. For God's sake, where are they?" Almost immediately, President Bush promised, "Help is on the way," and mobile kitchens, food,. and tents.
The national guard set up 5 tent cities to house the more than an estimated more than 130,000 plus people who were now homeless because over 60,000 homes we're completely destroyed and leveled.
There was no school for any of the kids because most of them were damaged by the storm and again there was no electricity.
South Miami-Dade county looked like a bomb hit it
It's something I'll never forget as long as I live.
My grandmother survived Andrew. She said it was the worst one she'd seen since Camille.
I remember being little and seeing pictures of Hurricane Andrew aftermath and being PETRIFIED of hurricanes. My family always told me that was a one off thing, it won't happen like that again. Fast forward 15 years, Charley, Irma, Harvey, Katrina, etc. And I'm just like 👀 yall lied to me.
Its just gonna get worse with climate change
I was 16 and lived through this, life was not the same for many years. grocery stores operating with only emergency lights and taking credit cards not electronically but the old fashioned way and using calculators to charge you with manual receipts. crazy times. watch hurricane Andrew as it happened on TH-cam, it's pretty much spot on
My dad and uncle were in the eye of this hurricane. My dad tells his survival story every year when theres a hurricane threat. Crazy stuff.
“Their fate is now in Andrew’s hands”
Me: And you just know that Andrew will keep making bad decisions
@user-wh5ir4fo4r Thank you.
I love watching these, but it is sad hearing what these people go through.
Imagine being in a low ef4 tornado for hours and hours. These people are lucky enough to be alive and hopefully smart enough to never get caught in another one
God bless the zinn family. Ian survived one of the worst hurricanes ever yet his life was taken by drowning. A strong man indeed.
even if no one in the family dies the sense of loss in losing your house has to be terrible
WOW! Hurricane Andrew’s aftermath is horrible. Even when Ian dies.
-Miela
Andrew was indeed insane
"home is where your roof landed" madlad
Andrew had so much wind 175 per wind that a lot…
We had enough to last a couple of DAYS and you think that’s enough? Wow.
I am astounded when I heard her say flippantly we had a couple days of food lol. These people don’t have a clue a cat5storm is nothing to shirk off. Cant say i feel sorry for those that have the means but did not leave.
Between the mattresses and only two days of food which probably would have to be cooked on electric lol or gas LOL blew my mind. It’s people really we’re living in La La Land. I feel sorry for the people who don’t have the means and are forced to stay. People who stayed just because Nada
I'm so very sorry for the loss of your son Ian...
I've lived in FL my whole life between being born and raised in Miami and living in Orlando. Hurricanes are actually pretty fun when they're cat 3 and under but higher than that, evacuation is a must because our homes are not built for this! Believe me, I've been in many storms to know this!
I went through several down there, starting with Andrew in '92. My personal rule became anything over 100mph forecast for my area I would leave. Never did have to leave but I think it was Ivan in '04? that I was holding our bending inward sliding glass door back with one hand and holding a drink in the other. Andrew was something else though; I watched the entire Dade County power grid explode from my house in Hollywood. About two hours of blue balls (no pun) of explosion on the horizon. Of course few had video cameras then, shame. The wind at our house actually picked me off the ground as a 13 year old and set me down a few feet from where I'd been standing. I decided to stay on the south facing porch after that.
for me it’s not fun even with tropical storms and depressions because tornadoes can happen
I remember when Andrew hit Florida. I was only 11 going on 12 a few weeks later. The first images that I saw on the news was like a nuclear bomb had gone off. Andrew was no joke and it was pissed off and it didn't care who's lives it took and who's houses it destroyed. Thank God most people evacuated cause the death toll could've been a lot worse. Andrew leveled block after block after block and people who stayed just couldn't believe the damage it caused. I truly feel bad for the Zinn family. They survived Andrew and then 9yrs later their son Ian drowns. That is so depressing for the family to deal with Andrew and losing their home and then lose their son 9yrs later.
at 8:03, they said 120 mph winds, I'm thinking that's an error, the hurricane was a Category 5, Homestead was in the most intense part of the storm.
I feel like I should be pissed my dad decided to take me (who was 7) to visit my grandparents in Miami when this hit. To this day, the craziest thing I remember from my childhood
While we were going through Andrew,our home in Ohio,burned to the ground.
Andrew was something I never want to EVER go through that again.
After Andrew,we drove to see who of our friends might need us,and it was bad,no electric,a whole lot of damage from water. Homestead was leveled though. I was so heart broken for them.
I remember that time want hurrican andrew i was 13 year old. My mom was pregnancy at the time with 3 child we were in miami garden at the time
"my mom was pregnancy with 3 child"
That last bit from Linda "I hope and pray we don't have anything like it again"... Then Hurricane Micheal hammered Florida as a category 5.
Didn't hit Homestead I think.
chdreturns that wasn’t in Miami. That was in the panhandle
First storm of the season, and hurricanes usually make landfall in these small place. Incredible footage.
Aired on Sunday, June 21, 2009
Our neighbors laughed at us too.
Whos here with Dorian
Haha me bro. I'm from NC. WHAT STATE U FROM
@@Jay-bu5ki I'm in Miami were out of the cone but should experience some wind and rain and school is cancelled on tuesday.
@@albertoquinones1173 Aye, be safe, I am in Wilmington, NC. You are going to get a lot more than I will. Praying 4 u
@Thomas Hale im from miami too and we are already prepared for it even thought it is suppose to move up with i don't think will happen
Dorian just destroyed Abaco in the Bahamas
Summer of 92 my grandparents were planning to take me to florida to go to this state park that i loved going to it has a cold spring and caves not sure the name anyways. We live in alabama so the trip wasn't going to take too long. Half way cross the state i start to have this bad feeling and it made me very upset and i started crying and begging them to turn around and go back home. Close to the state line they finally agreed and turned back around and we went back home...as soon as we walked through the door they told me off and then turned on the tv... It was the news talking about hurricane andrew heading towards the exact place we were going... After that they trusted my instincts on any future trips
I remember only a few things from Andrew in Broward when I was 3/4. I remember the clouds going so fast in the afternoon as the strong was coming into Miami... I’ve never seen them move so fast. Then my dad put up the last board and it got dark. It came in at night....That’s is the scariest shit ever. The sound the wind makes as it screams through the trees. Til this day I don’t like hearing wind blowing through trees. 😱 oh and the next day our patio was crushed by a huge tree that fell on the house. We have pictures. Super scary now.
I live in Texas and I joke about hurricanes named Selena and Yolanda
Hurricane Selena: Cat.1
Hurricane Yolanda: CAT 5!!!
I lived through Andrew. I was 27 and chose to ride out the Hurricane in South Miami. I was sure the hurricane would head north when it hit the Gulf Sream, ut it just heded striaight towards Miami. We did not board up the windows so you were able to see the rain blowing sideways whe the lightning hit nearby and the constant soutnd of the wind sounded like two freight trains zooming by the house on both sides. The sound of the roof creaking fearing the roof would peal off at any minute. Yet the worst part was the weeks afterwards with no power or water and insade traffic due to no street lights and debris and strand cars with multiple flat tires, cement power poles snapped to the ground. All the trees bend down with no leaves. It was like being in a war zone almost.
I wasn't born yet but nearly my entire family was living in Miami at the time. My parents and uncles/aunts have a bunch of photos of them and their destroyed homes except for my parents - our house was the only standing house on our street with minimal damage compared to others. Very lucky. This storm hit on my soon to be birthday (Aug 29), so wild.
People in the US should learn to build their houses better. Those wood and cardboard walls are just ridiculous. Over here, the first floor, the basement, and the carrying structures of the second floor are basically monolithic concrete blocks with 40cm of isolation wrapped around them on the outside.
Y'all have a government that cares about you. Us? Nope. Our constructors choose the cheapest building material and not the safest. Most of the new homes that are built would be destroyed in even an EF3 tornado.
Watching this makes me lucky that Dorian didn’t hit Florida
I remember Irma clear as day itself. We had been getting word about this storm for almost *weeks* now. I wanted to stay with my mom during the storm but I ended up heading to Lousiana (first we stopped at Tallahassee but then Irma turned and headed straight for us) with my grandma. When we got back to Florida it was almost as a BOMB went off. There was debris everywhere.
I live in West Central Florida and I was scared stiff. I'd never been so terrified in my life.
Yep, I went through irma. It didnt hit us directly, we were in west miami so we were more on the outside of the hurricane. Regardless, when we went outside it was crazy. Trees snapped in half, power lines on the streets, at night there was obviously no lights and it looked like a ghost town. The craziest part is that mcdonalds was open right after the hurricane, those crazy bastards
Driving in a hurricane in a car is dangerous. The roads could have blocked them from driving and sitting in the open when the car windows can easily break. They should have been driving in an armored bank vehicle with bulletproof windows.
My dad was in this one, and we're Canadian, lol. Anyway, he said he wanted to go out and play in the storm, but then he saw a giant tree get picked up and thrown away like it was just a stick. He decided to stay inside after that. That's pretty much the only thing he said about this storm; I don't think he liked talking about it much. I wish I'd paid more attention to stories like that when I had the chance; he's been gone almost 11 years now and I don't even know what he was doing so far south :p
Andrew was very tiny but catastrophic, don't judge a book by its cover
Last year I live in new Orleans hurricane Ida was bad ,cat 4 almost a 5 ,1 of the worst ones ever to hit Louisiana,worse than Katrina,Katrina was flooding,this storm was pure destruction and wind,the eyewall shifted a little east went 35 miles West of new Orleans,that's when shit got bad,the wind was howling sounding like a freight train,debree flying everywhere sounded like a big f4 tornado out their ,that wind was erie
Andrew wasn't a powerful Hurricane...Andrew was a FREAK Hurricane!
I lived in North Ft Myers for Andrew. I was 11 years old. An ariel shot of the state looked like god took a giant lawn mower and just ran straight across Fla.
These things are scary Hurricanes are life threatning even though i was never in Andrew imagine how many lives those people gave to Andrew and all the money being spent to rebuild
It is miraculous the survivors survived Hurricane 🌀 Andrew
There's a kind of poetic justice in selfish parents who refuse to evacuate, only to have themselves and their children horribly suffer throughout the duration of the storm. Could have not gone through all that. Maybe heed the evacuation warnings? What ignorance.
I was 11. We went to bed without a worry. But ended up in the bathroom with a mattress over our head and with 1/2 a walls around us.
The mother was a hero for saving her daughter when she went in to use the bathroom and reminded her to close the shower curtain durning hurricane Andrew she basically saved her from a potentially severe to fatal injury
17:05 The Zinn family's neighborhood easily had top wind gusts of no less than 300 mph if not even topping 325 mph, from the kind of destruction it did to that concrete house and that boat.
5:20 God blessed him with his life.
Rip Ian❤️💞🥰
I was living in central NY when Andrew hit, my dad and Uncle owned a condo on Siesta Key, they had damage there and we got effects of the storm in NY also.
Ian Zinn died. Damn! DAMN! DAMN!!!!!!!!!!! 😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢
Yeah, I had this awful feeling that was coming. What a sad story, this was a tough episode.
I can’t believe the parents would put their children’s lives in danger
I rmb lakes by the bay we took a school field trip to visit the million dollar homes after andrew every last one of the hundred homes were totaled
Jim Cantore is the MAN!! People, if authorities order you to leave, then you need to LEAVE or write your name and Social Security number on your body so that, if authorities find your body, they can identify you.
I think this was the worst because of the Tornados, massive amounts of tornados within a hurricane, if it had been in another spot where storm surge would be evenb worse it would of put it over the top but I would never ever leave it off the top 4 or 5 storms if not even 3 or 2... It is up there with Katrina and somebody who wiould say they were in it and it was worse, I would beleive it... I wonder if anybody is out there whom surived thru Katrina and Andrew...
This is devastating my players for dem the pain was alot god bless them🤲🏽
We rode out a horrid storm in a cinderblock hotel that had a generator. My kids and I were comfortable- running water, food, comfortable sleep. But trying to go home the next day we had to wait for the voluneers with chainsaws to cut a path on the highway, so it was late. Then had to wait 4 days to get power restored. I was just so happy for that hotel.
Adults want to hang at home and ride it out ok. But for the life of me I'll never understand these dudes that want to make their family/kids take that risk with them. smh It's sickening.
I left florida two days before Gilbert hit. My grandmother was traveling with us and she said there is something wrong, let’s get out of here.
Here in 2022, Hurricane Ian sliced though Florida but on the opposite side.
Been there done that! I lived in a 10-story apartment complex across from the Dadeland mall.
The damage was incredible but nothing like Homestead.
The morning of the 25th a friend and I went for a walk to look around. I noticed an American flag
lying on the ground from a KFC restaurant. I collected the flag and have it to this day.
I remember that hurricane my grandparents my sister my uncle and i were visiting my aunt in Ocala
God I’m so glad I’m in the northern/mid parts of Florida (Sebastian specifically)
As by the time hurricane get up to the area I’m in there so much weaker and the most damage I’ve ever experienced was power and mild flooding that didn’t do much at all.
Hurricane 🌀🌀 hurricane Andrew let's go hold down the 🏡🏠 yep what the hell is hurricane proof the time on the boat ⛵ the hurricane 🌀
Is there a hurricane party 🎉
How can anyone want to live in horrible Florida even without the hurricanes?
Hurricanes are a holiday
Because we arent scared. We prepare for them
How about the sinkholes? Those are awful too.
I lived through Maria in Puerto Rico
i use to live in Florida and i still dont understand why people who are in places that can come in direct contact with the storms stay and try to ride it out when they are this strong i get not having the money to go but i dont get why they stay if they dont got nowhere to go there are storm shelters and some places inland that will open there doors to the ones who dont have the money nor nowhere to go and if its transportation well then the government needs to start up a thing where church buses or greyhounds will take them for free to a safety area
It always pisses me off to no end when people ignore a mandatory evacuation when they tell you to get out listen don't be stupid it's even worse when you put your kids life's in danger evacuate for your kids sake let them live even though you want to be stupid with your own life I don't feel bad for the people that are stupid and stay behind during a hurricane especially a strong one your daughter suffers from asma and you still don't evacuate what terrible parents
Michael was a category 5...
Yeah but this episode aired several years before hurricane Michael
2009...
Never judge a book by its cover I hope they're ok!
This is likely the most horrible hurricane I have ever seen.
-Miela
😢😢😢😢
I was a year old living in Miami when Andrew hit & I don’t remember a thing