HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Public officials gathered in Homestead Tuesday to mark 30 years since the landfall of Hurricane Andrew, which remains one of the single-most destructive storms in Florida’s history.
“Hurricane Andrew killed 65 people, it destroyed 63,000 homes, it left 175,000 people homeless,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said.
The Category 5 hurricane made landfall in August of 1992, devastating several parts of southwest Miami-Dade, including Homestead and Cutler Ridge -- now called Cutler Bay.
While speaking at the Homestead Air Reserve Base, officials who were in Miami-Dade at the time recounted where they were and how the state’s storm readiness has dramatically improved in the years since.
“Andrew was an important mark in building code reform,” said FEMA Region IV administrator Gracia Szczech. “Officials learned so much in surveying the damage, about compromising garage doors, roof structures -- basically how to hold homes together.”
In addition to stepped up building codes, emergency agencies also improved their coordination and communication systems, making for a more efficient storm response.
“Hurricane Andrew was a catastrophic disaster,” Szczech said. “It was also a turning point in how FEMA, our state and local partners, and our nation as a whole respond to and recover from disasters.”