September 16, 2004 6:42 AM

Once the TV crews leave, the work is just beginning

Hurricanes leave scars that don’t easily heal

Anyone who has lived along the Gulf of Mexico or south Atlantic coasts for any length of time becomes familiar with the heavy weather associated with hurricane season. From 1 April through 30 October every year, tropical storms of various flavors are a fact of life in these parts.

Anywhere one could choose to live has risks associated with it. Few risks can be as destructive and devastating as a hurricane. It is difficult to describe the terror associated with being subjected to hurricane-force winds for hour upon hour as the world around you is disassembled by those winds. If you live in a coastal area as we do, not only do you have the wind, but also the rain, the storm surge, and the associated flooding. It can be a truly awesome and terrifying display of the power of nature.

A hurricane is at it’s base an exercise in perspective. The raw power brought to bear by a hurricane is a powerful demonstration of our relatve individual insignificance. Any force of nature that can drive 2x4s through tree trunks is nothing to be trifled with.

What can be even worse is the aftermath, the cleaning up and putting your life back together. Once the news crews and the klieg lights leave, the work is just beginning. The Miami Herald’s Ana Veciana-Suarez writes about her experiences after 1992’s Hurricane Andrew. It’s something that I hope none of us ever have to experience.

The sound of the wind, that’s what you never forget. The initial whisper. The growing mewing that turns into a howl. Then the cry of glass shattering. The snap of trees breaking. The grumble of a roof peeling apart.

That’s what I remember, a dozen years later, from Hurricane Andrew. It’s what I imagine the victims of Frances and Charley will recall a decade from now. When all is said and done, when the TV crews have left and the world’s attention has skipped elsewhere, the cacophony of nature will echo long after the lights have flicked back on….

But take it from a Hurricane Andrew survivor: The electricity is the least of it. Sure, it’s nice to have cold milk, a hot shower and air conditioning to ameliorate the unrelenting late-summer heat. But it’s better yet to regain peace of mind � and in the coming months that may prove as remote as a zero-calorie chocolate bar.

Twelve years ago on an early August Monday, Andrew barreled through south Miami-Dade, a category 5 storm that would become the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history. My house…was one of many that contributed to that statistic. It was eight months before we moved back, eight months in which we awaited insurance adjusters, battled contractors and cajoled workers who had their choice of jobs and the money that goes with it.

Andrew became a dividing line in our lives, an indelible boundary that forever marked the before and after, the once and the never….

Residents of these Florida towns will soon learn that weathering the winds was the easy part. The anguish of rebuilding lasts much longer. A dozen years later, my kitchen drawers don’t fit smoothly, the bedroom windows aren’t well-sealed, and the roof still leaks because of faulty flashing.

The scars of a hurricane run long and deep, yes, but sometimes they are also invisible. From them we learn an age-old lesson: In the end, even with storm shutters, even with batteries and water, we remain helpless against nature. My neighbor Karen, for instance, broke down in tears in the middle of the grocery store while shopping for hurricane supplies.

Earthquakes and tornadoes, while terrifying and destructive in their own right, are relatively short-lived phenomena. A hurricane can be an extended trip into terror, and once the storm clears, the terror may be only just beginning. A hurricane can turn an area into the temporary equivalent of a Third World country.

Dealing with the cleanup, the power outages, the insurance adjustors, the rebuilding, etc. can be a maddening and lengthy process. Twelve years later, those who survived Hurricane Andrew still bear the scars. If you’ve never been through a hurricane, you should consider yourself fortunate. The aftermath is something that, unless you’ve experienced it yourself, is difficult to describe. Having been through a few powerful tropical storms and one hurricane in my 7+ years here, I’ve been fortunate to have escaped the complete devastation that can often be visited upon an area. I hope that I will never have to experience that.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on September 16, 2004 6:42 AM.

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