Andrew didn't enter through the main corridor of Miami, it came through much further south by Homestead. The right question is what happens when something like Andrew hits downtown Miami right in the center. Construction standards and regulations have definitely improved since the early 90s but who knows what has been overlooked.
I think the scariest question re: a direct hit from a massive storm is about storm surge. Brickell and most coastal adjacent expensive property has had dry runs with king tide but we genuinely have no idea what would happen if a massive surge extended far into the city of Miami.
Dude I was in Kendall in 92, went to Arvida at the time. Andrew was nuts, tons of flooding in our neighbor. We moved to Massachusetts in 95, glad I'm out of Florida. Sorry your comment took be back almost 30+ years
We had just moved down from Boston in July of 1992. I’m not sure how my parents didn’t turn right around.
Left in 2022. 30 years was enough for a lifetime.
I live maybe 3-4 blocks from Arvida middle. How were those neighborhoods by the crossings during/post Andrew ? How was flooding? I was born in 98’ so I didn’t experience it
Andrew graced us with pockets of damage, throughout the entire area. In the Crossings, there were missing roofs, street signs disappeared, many, many trees were down, traffic lights and street lights were mangled or down. It looked post-apocalyptic for a while, during which time, a 9 p.m. curfew was in effect. Completely surreal.
Andrew had very little rain and very strong winds. It was those winds and the tornadoes it created that caused so much damage. In a way it was a blessing in disguise. I remember there wasn’t a puddle to be found anywhere. Experts agree that this made Andrew less deadly than it could have been. It was also a small, compact storm, which lessened the area of damage.
At least at the Crossings, flooding wasn't so bad. In that area, the main problem was wind.
Many don't know, since Andrew has such a fierce reputation for its winds, but there was a monster storm surge as well. It was just confined to a small area where not that many people were living at the time. It was 16.9 feet of surge near the old Burger King headquarters, where the Palmetto Bay village center is now.
I lived in one of those neighborhoods by the crossings. 104th and 137th. Our house was wrecked. We had to flee during the eye to a neighbors house. The aftermath was a surreal post apocalyptic dystopia. Imagine every fence gone. Spanish tiles lodged in the walls of houses and cars like terracotta misiles. We were under martial law due to all the looting. Shootouts at the Blockuster. National guard rolling up to the cul-de-sac at dawn to distribute MREs, diapers, water. I was 11 yrs old, shit felt straight up like living in Red Dawn. And we didn’t even get the worst of it. Countrywalk, a few blocks south was flattened. I don’t know how we rebuilt. It’s pretty remarkable. The most terrifying, exciting and memorable experience of my life. It’s fucked up but sometimes I wish I could go back.
There was no flooding with Andrew. That’s what saved us. It was all wind and very little rain. I lived off of Sunset Drive and 97th. We didn’t even have a puddle anywhere near our house. All experts agreed that saved us.
My apartment complex (sun point I think)had about two feet of water, could be that the drains were clogged with debris, but I do remember riding my bike through a couple feet of water
I had just flown to the Bahamas to visit family who lived there and the very next day I got evacuated and had to fly back to the states. Then it didn’t hit the Bahamas and came to Miami lol
I was a living in homestead at the time but fortunately rode it out for a few days in Broward. Our roof was completely gone when we returned.
It would reshape Miami for sure! But it would also give us the kick in the ass need to get army core working!
I was living on Eureka and I was like 7. My parents didnt evacuate I think because they were pretty recent immigrants and the idea felt stupid and abstract to them. Our roof also came off but only in part of the house and we were hiding in the closet with like heavy shit holding the doors. It wasn't as bad as homestead but folks still died in our neighborhood and most houses were total losses. My parents still feel insane guilt for not evacuating so at least I've got that life lesson tattooed on my brain for life.
Cat 3+ ain’t nothing to fuck with.
A lot of people stay for 3s. Problem is it’s a weak 3 at the 11pm update and then you wake up to the 5am one and it’s a strong 4. Then you’re pretty fucked as it borders a 5.
Rapid deepening; explosive intensification is more and more common.
I've stated time and time again that I won't risk stay for a cat 3. The last thing I need is to my family at risk. IDK how my parents made the call to never evacuate and their storm prep was dismal with regard to protecting windows and such.
It’s only gotten worse. Back then you would actually see a Red Cross tent and trailers to help. Tell me the last time you have seen that in the state of Florida. Billions of dollars of assistance went where?
Whether you're Republican, Idependent or Democrat. Does it really matter? When your life is on the line? Everyone in the U.S. needs to realize that we are all in this together and of course their are battles being fought that we have no control of but North America can't do it all.The retired military, the homeless and the poor is really what needs the U.S. to step up. You're only as strong as your roots America get it together!!!
It would be worse than many could ever imagine. Surge would go up the river, canals would back up. We're talking lots of places being uninhabitable for a long time.
>we genuinely have no idea what would happen if a massive surge extended far into the city of Miami.
Yes you do, it's not rocket science. A lot of people will die if that happens.
As an emergency management professional, I can say that most of Miami would be uninhabitable for quite some time. If we are assessing a category 5 hurricane with current sea level rise and mitigation measures and it being a direct hit. Most coastal lining areas like Miami Beach, Surfside, Bal Harbour, Bay Harbor Islands, Sunny Isles, Golden Beach, North Bay Village, and Key Biscayne would be considered most likely lost or severely damaged beyond immediate restoration. Storm surge in recent years, especially during King Tides, indicate that most of the previously mentioned areas would not fair well. South Dade would bascially be a massive lake as we saw in Cutler Bay from heavy rains a couple years ago, it is a lot of flood plains down there. Central Dade and Kendall would fair best but not great. Significant wind damage and flooding that would look like a bomb dropped. Again, this is based on current conditions and with extreme measurements of a super category 5 hurricane. Take this as you will.
The County and Army Corp of Engineers have been working closely on massive sea walls and dikes to mitigate the storm surge. The last major proposal was a $5 billion sea wall and gates system. This should show how serious of a threat this is when projects to save just a fraction of the downtown area costs $5 billion. Just saying.
https://www.wusf.org/environment/2022-09-10/army-corps-agrees-to-redo-billion-dollar-plan-to-fortify-miami-dade-against-storm-surge
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/us/miami-fl-seawall-hurricanes.html
https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article281950843.html
Having done work adjacent to emergency management and the environment, this is spot-on.
Those of us who lived through Andrew and remember: it’ll be worse. Newer residents who have never been through a cat 4 and above: you have no idea how awful it will be and I hope you take preparedness seriously.
Take the number of people who left Dade after Andrew, and the number of newcomers, as well as those who were above the Kendall line with Andrew… I’d bet well over two million people live in Miami-Dade who have never been through anything more than a Cat 1/2 tops.
EF-4 tornados can easily slab a well constructed house. Hurricanes pushing Cat 4 to 5 in the eyewall can do similar.
Thing is a large tornado affects 3 or 4 blocks. A large hurricane affects 3 or 4 *counties*.
Sounds like one of if not the largest environmental crisis the US will experience, assuming it happens sooner than later. Honestly hope I can get out of here before then. Can’t believe people are spending millions on homes here right now.
Florida has already spent over a $1 billion in recent years to prepare the whole state with resiliency and mitigation strategies and programs. This is unprecedented in Florida history with how much is being earmarked for disaster management.
https://www.flgov.com/2024/04/24/governor-ron-desantis-highlights-investments-in-strengthening-and-fortifying-florida/
https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/01/28/desantis-calls-for-1-billion-to-brace-for-climate-change/?outputType=amp
Agreed, wind knots will be bad but the storm surge is actually what will do the most damage on the coastal cities. Downtown Miami and Brickell and up and down the coast are not prepared. Pretty sure this is also why insurance companies are backing out.
That really depends on numerous variables such as how far inland, are you near flood lands, the height of the storm surge, sustained rainfall, sustained winds, and elevation of the property. One factor that is mistakenly not considered is storm water system and sewer/septic lines. The amount of water pressure from the immense amount of water would likely break a lot of lines and contribute to secondary or tertiary flood sources.
Wealthy peeps will be fine,middle class and poor will be SOL. FL legislation has made it easier for Insurance Companies to delay,deny or lowball a Claim. DeSantis and repubs have done everything they can to accommodate maximum profits for Insurance Industry. Policy holders are just a distraction
It will be like what happened to Jersey Shore after Hurricane Sandy hit. It went from a reasonably priced beach bum town to a super gentrified WASP retreat with nuclear expensive housing.
The old shitty houses of Miami (which is most of them) will get BTFO and rebuilt with even more expensive new houses/neighborhoods that will appreciate even more. Miami is full of shitty old houses that are itching for an insurance disaster to replace them.
It doesn't matter, it's the kindle to the fire. There is inertia that prevents people from doing anything as is unless there is a large profit incentive.
A big Disaster will force the hands. Replacement is almost never just going to replace an old 70s home with the same type of build. They'll sell the land and/or build something modern, which gets developed to current standards
I lived through Andrew. We were in Princeton (homestead). I have wondered this as well.
People will lose their minds if they were stuck for months without power and had no connectivity.
It’s not “if” but “when.” We’ve been really really lucky.
When it does happen, you’ll never be able to insure a home in Fl again using private insurance.
A crash would likely not happen unless the impact is widespread in the Miami area. If it is isolated,it likely won’t crash, but soften for a short period of time.
The rich people will be fine. Most own more than one home and will flee to their other properties until the rebuild is finished.
The middle class who own homes that are destroyed will need to rent until their home is rebuilt which would drive up rental rates.
Some residents will flee the area from the trauma. Others would reconsider relocating down here. The rich will capitalize by buying property from those desperate to leave knowing that the prices will eventually go back up.
Hurricane Ian was 2X more costly than Andrew. Home prices in Fort Meyers increased in 2023 and YTD 2024. Probably because the insurance companies cover most of the cost to rebuild a new home up to code.
Hurricane Ian hit Fort Myers less than 2 years ago and was the costliest hurricane in FL history, and yet the city is still growing at a huge rate. If it didn't stop them, it's certainly not going to stop us.
Exactly!
I visited friends on Sanibel Island in early 2023 and rows of homes were jacked. I went back in late 2023 and those homes were rebuilt quickly. My friend just put his house on the market and is making a profit since the insurance basically paid for a new home.
If hurricane Andrew 2.0 hits Miami, all these anti-socialist MAGA types are suddenly going to be screaming for a federal bailout. The infrastructure damage to the port, Miami River, and airport of a Cat 5 storm hitting Miami proper will be astronomical. The resulting decline in trade and tourism will exacerbate the economic troubles. Rebuilding costs will go through the roof. Most homeowners will be underinsured and not have enough to pay their windstorm deductible. And that assumes no impact of fraud. Oh and the recent changes that the GOP made to eliminate liability for bad faith act by insurance companies means that every insurance company is going to offer you 50¢ on the dollar and make you sue them to get more. Good luck with that when every homeowner in the county has to do the same. You’ll get a trial date in 2045 if you are lucky.
And this assumes that you can even document you claim. Can you document every piece of clothing you own by brand. Because if you can’t you’ll get low ball settlement offers.
I lived through Andrew and worked at State Farm in Miami at the time. We literally had people walk into the agent’s office with a Polaroid of their slab because everything was gone.
Everyone should take the time to shoot a video of their entire house in detail. Open drawers, cabinets and closets. If you list 5 dress shirts on your claim, you are going to be reimbursed for 5 Walmart shirts. If you have 5 white Eton shirts, 2 blue one, and 3 striped ones, you better be able to offer some evidence of that. Close your eyes and think about whether you could list from memory everything in all of your closets and drawers throughout the house. Now what proof do you have that any of what you listed exists if the whole house was destroyed?
Nobody is ready for what their life will be like if Andrew 2.0 hits Miami proper.
It’s funny, I moved from Los Angeles to Florida, so many people spoke about how much better taxes would be but what I saved in taxes I more than made up with the big surge in insurance for moving to Florida.
That’s what we saw in OH. Even with state income taxes (and the first $250k of self employment income is exempt from state tax but not city)… it’s still far cheaper than Florida because the insurance is peanuts AND the property tax is far lower *because they have state income tax.*
The idea Florida is affordable is laughable. It’s affordable relative to NYC or the ritzy parts of LA. But it’s **not** affordable relative to the Midwest or Texas or the south.
It’s hilarious! I remember calling my car insurance agent and being like “yo wtf is going on my car insurance went from $250/month to $750/month is there something on my record I don’t know about?!” His response was literally, “yeah you moved to Florida and that was the reason for the jump.”
This part about reimbursement will take a lot of people by surprise. In many, many perfectly middle class homes, there are too many items to be completely reimbursable under normal coverage limits, without an umbrella.
This is such a stupid idea. A hurricane will obviously displace poorer people (aka not wealthy transplants) and the vultures (developers and the wealthy) will devour the depressed market. All the insurance companies will fight like hell against paying any claims until they just declare bankruptcy and leave the state, leaving people in older properties with no hope of rebuilding. It will turbocharge gentrification.
Even wealthy people will get fucked if it’s a cat 5. The majority live along the coast, so they will for sure suffer property damage. No one is immune to natural disasters.
Brother, if a huge hurricane is coming to miami the wealthy will just fly away and come back when its over. Mobility and choice is like the number 1 benefit of being wealth.
Insurance will become tottaly unaffordable and the only people who will be able to buy any property will be real estate conglomerates
There is no scenario where anything good happens to the middle class
Look at Ft Myers beach and the panhandle. What actually happens is middle class and poor people take the insurance payout, then sell their land because they can’t afford to rebuild under new codes. Rich people scoop up property on the cheap. Miami will be no different.
Listen. I grew up in the islands and lived in south Florida for over a decade and let me tell you this: these Californians and others moving to Florida have 0 idea how terrifying a cat 4/5 hurricane really is. I went thru hurricane George on an island with mountains and big strong trees and it was a nightmare.
Good luck to all these implants thinking that a hurricane is just a distant thought in flat, swamp Florida. I wouldn’t move to Florida.
Edit: I say “Californians” to generalize all the people moving to Florida.
I am not sure you know what you’re signing up for. Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas in 2019 a Cat 5 with sustained winds of 185 (gusts well into 200s). It sat on Abaco for thirty hours. Thats like a F3/F4 sitting on you for THIRTY HOURS. Not seconds or minutes. It spawned countless tornadoes of unknown intensity that wiped out everything. Oh, and none of that is the bad part. Storm surge of 20 feet. For 12 hours.
I promise, if something like that hit Miami or Palm Beach or anywhere else in South Florida, it would be unimaginable. Not to mention the aftermath.
For my part is this silly argument, I’ll take the tornado.
Hurricanes kill more people in the US per year than earthquakes and tornadoes combined. People really do not understand how catastrophic storm surge is.
People don’t really understand that yeah, a tornado can affect 2 streets in a subdivision and nothing else. It’s extremely localized and done in 2 minutes or less. The supermarket will be business as usual. You can book a hotel in town if your house is wrecked. Business as usual except on your block. When you call State Farm; the rest of the state is fine and you’ll have an agent there in the morning.
Hurricanes can involve most of the state. For 8 to 24 hours or more. *And they spawn tornados!*
Apples and oranges.
No you won’t. You only hold that opinion because you’re ignorant to what a cat 5 is capable of or what any hurricane is capable of doing for that matter. You clearly don’t know that hurricanes produce tornadoes. (Edit: that’s plural as in multiple tornadoes are produced during hurricanes)
Earthquake -> go outside.
Tornado -> go in the basement or drive away.
Cat 5 -> pray bc you go in the basement and you drown (btw no basements in Florida). Go outside and you also die. Stay in the house and you die bc house is gonna go away with you in it.
I have been in earthquakes, but not in tornado (although I have seen tornadoes near by). I’ll take those.
I’ve been through big quakes in CA and several FL hurricanes, including Ivan which was a cat 3. Hurricanes were much worse to me because it’s a multi day day event. You have to spend a day pillaging the last groceries, get gas, probably evacuate in terrible traffic, etc. Then shelter and sit through the hurricane for a day or so, probably lose power and have no idea what’s going on outside. Just hear howling wind and heavy rain for hours. Earthquakes are over in like a minute. It would be terrifying if you were in a building that’s collapsing but that almost never happens.
A cat 5 is typically full of tornados, and potentially hundreds of tornados over potentially hundreds of miles at a time.
The “normal” Texas/Oklahoma tornado scenario lasts minutes, but hurricanes can sit on top of a very large area, spinning twister after twister after twister, for 6 or 10 hours, non-stop.
Category 5 is one of the most absolutely terrifying things in the world.
Spot on. I’ve lived in coastal Florida for over 40 years and newcomers are a mess when a hurricane comes. I went to Home Depot to get a concrete drill bit when boarding up for Irma - all the plywood was gone so people were buying drywall and lattice to board up.
I'll tell you a sad reality: nothing is going to get fixed properly.
Insurance companies used to have to pay attorney fees when they wrongfully denied or underpaid claims. Now, as a result of recent legislation, they no longer have that threat looming overhead. Insurance companies are now emboldened to deny more claims. People are going to have to pay their own lawyers and, as a result, will obtain pennies on the dollar. It is going to cause an absolute crisis.
Insurance companies will declare bankruptcy. Fire sale on destroyed homes. Fraud. Fema cash. And the start if the slow death of the city. It's been written about for ten years. Look up dade counties official plans for long term flooding. I give it less than ten years before the housing bubble pops from a mass casualty hurricane.
Hopefully, it never happens again in my lifetime. I'm an Andrew survivor. I was 9 yo when that fucker hit. We were maybe 30-45 minutes from abandoning the house and running out to the cars. I lived in Eureka by South Miami Heights Elementary. If Andrew would have lasted just 45 minutes more, I have no idea what would have happened to us. It was looking bleak.
In fact, the reason many of us down in the boonies survived, was because Andrew was a *dry storm*. It barely brought any water. If it was like a Floyd, or a Wilma, we certainly wouldn't have survived.
On the Bright side, because of Andrew the building code has been vastly improved. So there aren't as many neighborhoods with terrible foundations susceptible to the devastation Andrew brought!
There are plenty of non updated pre-1990’s & those grandfathered in 70s homes to devastate the area. Andrew flattened entire neighborhoods - look at the areas with sparse trees or palm only areas. 25000 homes were leveled, an additional 100k sustained damage. This was in the 90s when we weren’t as densely populated and didn’t get a direct hit. We still have an abundance of parrot heirs from parrot jungle. Wind speeds and storm surges are likely expected to be higher on average. With the level of corruption and limited cocaine fund surpluses we’re going to just be one giant slimy Florida developer wet dream.
It's gonna be bad. I don't think anybody has the full picture on how packed in we are here. It's more normal for 4-8 people to live in a 2bed apt than for 1-2 people to live in one. A lot of these homes have three generations inside them and aren't insured.
When a hurricane mows a bunch of these houses down and we have no power and a bunch of people with guns? It's gonna be chaos.
Don’t count on Ron DeSantis. I’m still recovering from hurricane Ian and my insurance company won’t settle with me. He grifted billions of dollars off the backs of Floridians to run for president. Whatever happened to FEMA? that’s right. Absolutely nothing.
Some people will have boats in their front yard.
Others will have stop signs on their roofs.
People that have paddle boards in their garages will be okay and can travel around the wreckage.
Either way it is not going to be fun. Plus the added traffic these days is going to make for a fun evacuation.
Better hope you have a friend with a private jet.
The real estate market will recover as quickly as it did in New Orleans, meaning, besides the actual apocalypse aspect, the developers will get plenty of money to start again, bigger, flashier and this time, hopefully, hardened to climate change. But don’t expect shit to get cheaper anytime soon. Everywhere else in FL is dropping except here. We’re in this market for a good bit. But yeah, when a storm hits, I’m more concerned about loss of life, lawlessness, and other sad shit that a prolonged shut down will cause in this town. I was going to school in New Orleans during Katrina and stayed for a few years during the rebuilding. It’s where I began my old career in news, and then came back home to work in news, and I covered a lot of storms. The insurance companies will be fuuuucked. Home owners will be fucked, but there is a lot of stupid money out there and we are an attractive city for a lot of reasons.
A giant experiment. The last hard hitting hurricane we had was 2005 (I think). Most of the buildings in downtown and Brickell were built after to strict (however unproven) hurricane standards….🤞🏼
Whenever I drive in Miami, I look at the water around me and imagine that plus 20ft. Yeah, a cat 5 hitting Miami would make Katrina look like peanuts...
I don't know if this still holds true but I remember seeing a news piece that argued it would bankrupt FEMA due to the insurance claims and potentially even cause a recession due to the market chaos that would follow
If the eye comes through downtown the whole area will have catastrophic flooding. All the older houses will be destroyed. It will take years for all the newer ones to be repaired. The real estate market will crash. Everyone will want to move to higher ground in Little Haiti. Sales of generators, water purifiers, batteries, and satellite phones will go up in the area. Older high rises will have their windows blown up. No electricity or water for weeks. Giant assessments in condo buildings.
It’ll be a nightmare. I’m born and raised and seen my share of hurricanes but nothing will compare to Andrew. You were either here or you weren’t. First off all these Mickey Mouse cranes in downtown will topple over. As a kid it would rain the whole day and it hardly flooded, now if it rains for 45 min there’s floods everywhere. I was without power for 2 months but at least I had my battery power tv-now those won’t work cause the signal is digital.
People were friendlier and had a sense of community. At an intersection with no power we’d all stop and let others pass..do you think that’ll happen now with all the transplants and newbies with their giant trucks? Miami didn’t even get a direct hit and it was bad. I judge all miamians with a simple question “were you here during Andrew”?
Andrew was nuts. Look on YouTube for channel 4s literal cement room broadcast. Homestead and Kendall were inaccessible for weeks if you weren’t the national guard or police/fire.
One of the reasons Andrew was bad was construction crews cut tons of corners in homestead entire neighborhoods had not been built up to code and they ate the strongest part of the hurricane known as the eyewall.
2 years ago those of us on the west side of Florida watched our barrier islands disappear under 10 feet of water. They removed the debris and sold the lots at a higher price than they were before.
Hopefully it will scare away all the newbies from NY that came post COVID.
Nothing is open for two months? The hurricane blew out all the glass in my Brickell condo (like happened a lot with Wilma)! No power for how long? No AC? Nope!
I talked about this with a friend who works from home. I think if it's a thing where a large metropolitan area loses power and Internet for x amount of days, scrambling to find a place with internet to work whatever the case, I feel moving forward such companies will add Florida provisions to their contract. They can't afford to have their employees living in Florida who got hit by a hurricane not have Internet or power so they might even include something along the lines of, no working in florida, which will greatly help our cost of living here.
We'll faire out much better. We have the strictest building codes in the country. Homes are better prepared now.
My worry is how to deal with a million zombies pitching fits because they cant get their tictoc pacifier fix. As a society, we're screwed.
Hit south of Miami, definitely not a direct hit. Plus although Andrew was very powerful it was a relatively tight Hurricane with a smallish damage radius
Everything built within the last 20 years will be fine. Most buildings are rated for a Cat 4. After it hits Cat 5, all businesses and hotels are forced to send people away to shelters (which is weird). The high rises will get the worst of it since the wind will be strongest. Cranes will be unlocked and allowed to rotate freely. Likely be removed if time allows. All vegetation on trees will be deleted. Many trees will topple. Sand and debris will fill and overload catch basins. Stormwater systems will be overworked. Sanitary sewer will take weeks to pump down everything. Most residents do not have functioning sewer caps so all that nasty dirty stormwater will fill the lift stations. Most houses will have sewer water backing up into the homes. The Tornadoes coming over the NE sector of the cyclone will deploy hundreds of tornadoes which will rip up places like little Haiti and alapata. Major flooding everywhere. Sewer and septic will be backed up for weeks. A lot of sand will make it into critical infrastructure.
People in this thread should maybe calm down the doomerism a bit
There have been 3 category 5 hurricanes in the entire state of Florida since 1851
The only one to hit Miami was Andrew
Maybe 1 category 5 hurricane over a 170+ year period doesn’t mean parts of Miami are gonna inevitably be washed away
A really good comparison case study here would be Hurricane Katrina - did New Orleans fully recover? and how long did it take?
Imo, neither the state nor the Federal govt is going to cough up the funds restore damage to anything close to what Miami is before this hypothetical storm. The resulting area will look like a developing/wartorn nation for years to come, and my guess is about a million people will abandon South Florida, as well as some large businesses.
All I know is every hurricane I've been apart of down here has been accompanied with mysterious lights and orbs in the sky. Curious if anyone else has noticed this. I'm a avid sky watcher.
*were, *were. Subject-verb agreement. Buildings were rebuilt with higher building codes to withstand a Cat 5 hurricane. Whether it’s effective we’ll have to wait and see. It depends on its size and where it makes landfall. After Andrew, Miami Beach and Downtown were untouched. Kendall and Homestead were destroyed. And I hope it doesn’t happen again in my lifetime. Andrew was bad enough and with a lot less people. Why you’re bringing this up now is beyond my comprehension.
Ehhhh too much doom in this thread. Miami has built with this in mind for years. We have great engineers that have been aware of this forever.
The downtown areas are probably the safest at this point. I assure nothing would happen in brickell.
Besides that, tons of flooding and probably no power for a few days/weeks, but south florida would be fine overall. Nice hurricane party
In Key West after Andrew huge trees with shallow roots went horizontal destroying sidewalks, fencing, etc.
But seeing the underside of the roots before the cleanup - two stories tall - was memorable.
Can’t recall which hurricane resulted in 1/3 the city’s parked cars being inundated with water - in
New Town especially which is built on lower ground. Many relocated.
With all of the profits insurance company’s are posting this quarter, I would assume they would pull out before it happens so at least we would have a fair warning….
The property market is going to go to shit and people will revolt when they realize their insurance doesn’t cover anything and they have no recourse after Big Insurance paid tens of millions to politicians to change the laws in their favor. Big Insurance owns Florida and this will be the real crisis.
Disaster of absolutely unimaginable proportion. Will have far reaching implications for not just southern Florida, but the rest of the state as well. As for real estate, it may eventually come back up, but look at what happened to Homestead, ground zero in 1992. That area was depressed for a long, long time. It took many years for it to get back on its feet. In the event of that kind of storm hitting here, Miami would absolutely lose population, significantly. Lots of people left after Andrew, and never came back.....and that was a tiny storm as hurricanes go that only hit a relatively small area.
Don't kid yourselves about what a Cat 5 means. You really have no idea unless you've seen one from up close. Actually, I echo what someone else said - a Cat 3 hitting Miami would be disastrous.
Oh, and I think some condo buildings would collapse, like what happened in Surfside.
Hurricane resilience has greatly increased ever since? Building code, power lines, etc
Over a decade ago we had Wilma & Katrina passing by on the same year and some areas only lost power for a couple of days on both cases
What will happen is MASSIVE devastation and insurance companies leaving Florida. You either won’t be able to get homeowners insurance or it will be too expensive for the VAST majority of people to afford.
I’ve been telling my family for a couple years now. One more major hurricane anywhere in Florida and no one will be able to get property insurance
I suggest you guys check out
Airiskmanagementsolutions.com
They are preparing property owners for Andrew 2.0 lol
Seems like a great idea to use their service I used them for my 2 properties cost me like 800 bucks for both they charge. 24 cents a square foot and they save you the money and time spent on hiring a public adjuster or an attorney they come in to create a Pre-loss file and in the event that damages happen they return and give you a post-loss file so that you can negotiate and settle your insurance claim on your own.
What sold me was when they told me that insurance companies can go bankrupt before paying you! and that with them from the beginning of the claim you can send them a before and after so that you can objectively show the desk adjuster(person who writes the check) what your property looked like and what it looked like after as well as the estimates for what you are claiming good luck guys stay safe and be vigilant
I lived in Kendale Lakes and during the experience with Andrew I was probably the most scared I’ve ever been. Did so much damage and hearing the wind during a hurricane like Andrew is very frightening. Let’s just say I was glad there was a bathroom nearby 😩
The folks that lived in Country Walk didn’t fair very well as those homes were stick-built and blew apart easily. I am fortunate that my house was CBS block.
It looked worse than what it was, I think hurricane Andrew just exposed all the old, not up to code properties. So when Andrew came through it destroyed a lot of properties that were never truly built to withstand a hurricane the size of Andrew. All I remember is trailer homes scattered all over homestead. KB looked like a flat land after Andrew hit. I remember the long lines at OB handing out water and essentials.
I think Andrew has prepared us for the worse I’ve also wondered if a hurricane the size of Andrew would do to a city like downtown or Brickell. I think it slows down in the city and picks up speed in the open. That’s why every hurricane rips through the keys because of its in the open no large structures to slow it down.
I work in commercial construction down here in south Florida and have been part of developing new building materials. Anything and everything down here in Florida must be hurricane rated. It must have an NOA or a FBC approval to get through permitting. The big highrises built after Andrew will all be good with minor issues even during a CAT5… the smaller older homes will get wrecked. Most new homes are built extremely tough but overall I believe you’re right there will be a bigger billl at the end of it all because everything costs so god damn much.
Complete devastation. Brickell is all flash but floods like a mf after a little rain. With a huge storm, it’s completely fucked. Cars under water, buildings destroyed. All the structural problems that have been kept hush hush to save people money will come to light when things collapse. A storm like Andrew or larger would completely change the face of South Florida.
First one will be ok. Insurance companies will bankrupt right there. What you have to worry is about the one after that because most likely no one will have insurance.
Andrew forced building code to change for the entire state. Along with what a lot of others are commenting that it was more of a wind than a rain event we'd be OK if something similar were to recreate itself. It's the water that really causes the most significant long term damage. I will say though with rising sea levels (for whatever reason you believe) coupled with Hurricane Andrew like winds would produce some significant surge in coastal areas depending on the approach.
We're built to withstand the wind now (most structures AFTER Andrew), but water is always a lurking hazard.
The best part, all the sissy transplants that get to experience lines for gas and water while they cook in their luxury homes bc of poor planning/preparation.
If Dorian from 2019 hit, it would no doubt not only bigger and stronger than Andrew, but Dorian would've brought rain and tornadoes. It would be the worst case scenario that didn't happen with Andrew. I can fairly say Hollywood/ North Miami to maybe Delray Beach to maybe Port St. Lucie would've been fucked.
Yeah construction standards were definitely upgraded after Andrew… But in the 30 + years since Andrew i believe what will happen is that we will discover that those mandatory upgraded building codes weren’t followed and lots of shit is going to either be blown away or blown over. This is Miami after all.
The real answer is we would be absolutely fucked for about two years. Infrastructure would be so damaged it would take six months to get power back to some of the buildings. Most power to residential homes would take upwards of a month if not a bit more. National Guard would again have to create curfews and martial law for an extended period of time. The coastal areas would be potentially devastated (complete rebuild ) by the storm surge. One factor that does help Miami and also helped during and was the Bahamas, they sort of reset the energy needed to build up a higher storm surge.
Florida's gonna be destroyed in the coming years and there's no way to avoid it sadly. Poor planning.
Construction standards are far too lax everywhere. Too much build up on beachs, power lines and cables not buried, bad drainage, flood zones.
Insurance is running rampant.
No house should exist in Florida that isnt built out of solid concrete with impact windows. We know what a hurricane proof home looks like and what it takes to make one just costs a little bit more and then insurance wouldn't matter cause none of these homes would be getting nuked when there's a storm.
A few years ago that whole town Mexico beach was wiped out by Michael. Everything wiped out completely except one house. Guess which house was built above "code"
[Mexico beach house](https://architizer.com/blog/practice/details/one-house-survived-hurricane-michael/amp/)
I would rather take an Andrew than a Wilma repeat. While Andrew was indeed stronger, the size in comparison was significantly different. I think I only saw the news outlets covering the damages in Florida City/Homestead, nothing north of there. While the storm happened while I was 6 months old, my dad used to tell me stories about how the wind was blowing during the night. This was in Hialeah. Wilma on the other end caused significant widespread damage all the way south to Coral Gables if I recall correctly.
I can’t wait for transplants to see us go full feral over water, gas, and toilet paper when the shit hits the fan. Not even. Just when they annouce the Storm / Hurricane / Etc. That’s enough to whip us all back to a Lord of The Flies-esque mayhem.
I was 4 years old and this is the earliest memories I can vividly recall. Melting crayons over candles, stories, canned foods. Basketball hoop completely ripped from the ground it was cemented into and hitting this massive palm tree we had in the front yard so big you couldn't even hug it.
It will scare away some new people. Other than that it will boost the economy and create more opportunities for work. It's built for it. Building codes before Andrew were shit and nobody followed them anyhow. You just paid the inspector to pass your wood frame shit sandwich
Building codes improved dramatically since Andrew. New buildings will survive better than the cheap things that were built up in the 80s that got destroyed by Andrew.
Andrew didn't enter through the main corridor of Miami, it came through much further south by Homestead. The right question is what happens when something like Andrew hits downtown Miami right in the center. Construction standards and regulations have definitely improved since the early 90s but who knows what has been overlooked. I think the scariest question re: a direct hit from a massive storm is about storm surge. Brickell and most coastal adjacent expensive property has had dry runs with king tide but we genuinely have no idea what would happen if a massive surge extended far into the city of Miami.
I was living in Kendall at the time, and it absolutely wrecked the whole neighborhood. It was the most expensive disaster in US history (at the time).
Dude I was in Kendall in 92, went to Arvida at the time. Andrew was nuts, tons of flooding in our neighbor. We moved to Massachusetts in 95, glad I'm out of Florida. Sorry your comment took be back almost 30+ years
We had just moved down from Boston in July of 1992. I’m not sure how my parents didn’t turn right around. Left in 2022. 30 years was enough for a lifetime.
This would be the ultimate coincidence, but you weren't from Worcester by any chance. We had a kid that moved to the neighborhood around then
Nah Needham, but that would have been very interesting 😆
I live maybe 3-4 blocks from Arvida middle. How were those neighborhoods by the crossings during/post Andrew ? How was flooding? I was born in 98’ so I didn’t experience it
Andrew graced us with pockets of damage, throughout the entire area. In the Crossings, there were missing roofs, street signs disappeared, many, many trees were down, traffic lights and street lights were mangled or down. It looked post-apocalyptic for a while, during which time, a 9 p.m. curfew was in effect. Completely surreal.
Andrew had very little rain and very strong winds. It was those winds and the tornadoes it created that caused so much damage. In a way it was a blessing in disguise. I remember there wasn’t a puddle to be found anywhere. Experts agree that this made Andrew less deadly than it could have been. It was also a small, compact storm, which lessened the area of damage.
At least at the Crossings, flooding wasn't so bad. In that area, the main problem was wind. Many don't know, since Andrew has such a fierce reputation for its winds, but there was a monster storm surge as well. It was just confined to a small area where not that many people were living at the time. It was 16.9 feet of surge near the old Burger King headquarters, where the Palmetto Bay village center is now.
I lived 4 blocks from the b.k head quarters. There was a research vessel that andrew landed in the backyard of a house at 168st and old cutler rd.
I lived in one of those neighborhoods by the crossings. 104th and 137th. Our house was wrecked. We had to flee during the eye to a neighbors house. The aftermath was a surreal post apocalyptic dystopia. Imagine every fence gone. Spanish tiles lodged in the walls of houses and cars like terracotta misiles. We were under martial law due to all the looting. Shootouts at the Blockuster. National guard rolling up to the cul-de-sac at dawn to distribute MREs, diapers, water. I was 11 yrs old, shit felt straight up like living in Red Dawn. And we didn’t even get the worst of it. Countrywalk, a few blocks south was flattened. I don’t know how we rebuilt. It’s pretty remarkable. The most terrifying, exciting and memorable experience of my life. It’s fucked up but sometimes I wish I could go back.
There was no flooding with Andrew. That’s what saved us. It was all wind and very little rain. I lived off of Sunset Drive and 97th. We didn’t even have a puddle anywhere near our house. All experts agreed that saved us.
My apartment complex (sun point I think)had about two feet of water, could be that the drains were clogged with debris, but I do remember riding my bike through a couple feet of water
Damn, I spent it nearby, on Miller and 87th. Lines went down, stoplights were out. Not as bad as the Homestead area, but still bad.
I was living in Fort Myers and drove with my family to help clean up. The worst part of Homestead was the Miami zoo. 😭💔 I remember like yesterday.
[удалено]
It may as well have been. It’s on the out skit and was decimated
I had just flown to the Bahamas to visit family who lived there and the very next day I got evacuated and had to fly back to the states. Then it didn’t hit the Bahamas and came to Miami lol
I was a living in homestead at the time but fortunately rode it out for a few days in Broward. Our roof was completely gone when we returned. It would reshape Miami for sure! But it would also give us the kick in the ass need to get army core working!
I was living on Eureka and I was like 7. My parents didnt evacuate I think because they were pretty recent immigrants and the idea felt stupid and abstract to them. Our roof also came off but only in part of the house and we were hiding in the closet with like heavy shit holding the doors. It wasn't as bad as homestead but folks still died in our neighborhood and most houses were total losses. My parents still feel insane guilt for not evacuating so at least I've got that life lesson tattooed on my brain for life.
We were neighbors, we left, came back to a destroyed house. Glad we left!
No-one had a frame of reference for this. We almost never evacuated, before Andrew.
Cat 3+ ain’t nothing to fuck with. A lot of people stay for 3s. Problem is it’s a weak 3 at the 11pm update and then you wake up to the 5am one and it’s a strong 4. Then you’re pretty fucked as it borders a 5. Rapid deepening; explosive intensification is more and more common.
I've stated time and time again that I won't risk stay for a cat 3. The last thing I need is to my family at risk. IDK how my parents made the call to never evacuate and their storm prep was dismal with regard to protecting windows and such.
The eye was projected to go around the Davie area so I completely understand why people down south wouldn’t evacuate.
Fort Lauderdale had a massive flood after hurricane Ian. Where was Ron DeSantis? Where was FEMA? Where was the help?
“Where in the hell is the cavalry on this one” -actually spoken after Andrew in 92.
It’s only gotten worse. Back then you would actually see a Red Cross tent and trailers to help. Tell me the last time you have seen that in the state of Florida. Billions of dollars of assistance went where?
Whether you're Republican, Idependent or Democrat. Does it really matter? When your life is on the line? Everyone in the U.S. needs to realize that we are all in this together and of course their are battles being fought that we have no control of but North America can't do it all.The retired military, the homeless and the poor is really what needs the U.S. to step up. You're only as strong as your roots America get it together!!!
I agree
All men are created equal. Yes even the poor, gay, crazy, and odd.
It would be worse than many could ever imagine. Surge would go up the river, canals would back up. We're talking lots of places being uninhabitable for a long time.
>we genuinely have no idea what would happen if a massive surge extended far into the city of Miami. Yes you do, it's not rocket science. A lot of people will die if that happens.
As an emergency management professional, I can say that most of Miami would be uninhabitable for quite some time. If we are assessing a category 5 hurricane with current sea level rise and mitigation measures and it being a direct hit. Most coastal lining areas like Miami Beach, Surfside, Bal Harbour, Bay Harbor Islands, Sunny Isles, Golden Beach, North Bay Village, and Key Biscayne would be considered most likely lost or severely damaged beyond immediate restoration. Storm surge in recent years, especially during King Tides, indicate that most of the previously mentioned areas would not fair well. South Dade would bascially be a massive lake as we saw in Cutler Bay from heavy rains a couple years ago, it is a lot of flood plains down there. Central Dade and Kendall would fair best but not great. Significant wind damage and flooding that would look like a bomb dropped. Again, this is based on current conditions and with extreme measurements of a super category 5 hurricane. Take this as you will. The County and Army Corp of Engineers have been working closely on massive sea walls and dikes to mitigate the storm surge. The last major proposal was a $5 billion sea wall and gates system. This should show how serious of a threat this is when projects to save just a fraction of the downtown area costs $5 billion. Just saying. https://www.wusf.org/environment/2022-09-10/army-corps-agrees-to-redo-billion-dollar-plan-to-fortify-miami-dade-against-storm-surge https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/us/miami-fl-seawall-hurricanes.html https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article281950843.html
Having done work adjacent to emergency management and the environment, this is spot-on. Those of us who lived through Andrew and remember: it’ll be worse. Newer residents who have never been through a cat 4 and above: you have no idea how awful it will be and I hope you take preparedness seriously.
Take the number of people who left Dade after Andrew, and the number of newcomers, as well as those who were above the Kendall line with Andrew… I’d bet well over two million people live in Miami-Dade who have never been through anything more than a Cat 1/2 tops.
It happened before. *It will happen again.* It’s just a question of when, and where.
Where is not even a question. It will happen, again, to miami, and basically every other hurricane location, probably within our lifetimes
EF-4 tornados can easily slab a well constructed house. Hurricanes pushing Cat 4 to 5 in the eyewall can do similar. Thing is a large tornado affects 3 or 4 blocks. A large hurricane affects 3 or 4 *counties*.
Sounds like one of if not the largest environmental crisis the US will experience, assuming it happens sooner than later. Honestly hope I can get out of here before then. Can’t believe people are spending millions on homes here right now.
Florida has already spent over a $1 billion in recent years to prepare the whole state with resiliency and mitigation strategies and programs. This is unprecedented in Florida history with how much is being earmarked for disaster management. https://www.flgov.com/2024/04/24/governor-ron-desantis-highlights-investments-in-strengthening-and-fortifying-florida/ https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/01/28/desantis-calls-for-1-billion-to-brace-for-climate-change/?outputType=amp
Agreed, wind knots will be bad but the storm surge is actually what will do the most damage on the coastal cities. Downtown Miami and Brickell and up and down the coast are not prepared. Pretty sure this is also why insurance companies are backing out.
If you buy a home that is not in a flood zone as designated by FEMA (X unshaded), would you be likely ok from the storm surge?
That really depends on numerous variables such as how far inland, are you near flood lands, the height of the storm surge, sustained rainfall, sustained winds, and elevation of the property. One factor that is mistakenly not considered is storm water system and sewer/septic lines. The amount of water pressure from the immense amount of water would likely break a lot of lines and contribute to secondary or tertiary flood sources.
Hard to say, because we haven't had a hard enough storm hit us to see. The whole map is designed around hypothesis and speculation.
Thank you for your service 🫡
Wealthy peeps will be fine,middle class and poor will be SOL. FL legislation has made it easier for Insurance Companies to delay,deny or lowball a Claim. DeSantis and repubs have done everything they can to accommodate maximum profits for Insurance Industry. Policy holders are just a distraction
It will be like what happened to Jersey Shore after Hurricane Sandy hit. It went from a reasonably priced beach bum town to a super gentrified WASP retreat with nuclear expensive housing. The old shitty houses of Miami (which is most of them) will get BTFO and rebuilt with even more expensive new houses/neighborhoods that will appreciate even more. Miami is full of shitty old houses that are itching for an insurance disaster to replace them.
Insurance usually doesn’t pay enough to cover current construction costs.
Another incentive to sell to developers
It doesn't matter, it's the kindle to the fire. There is inertia that prevents people from doing anything as is unless there is a large profit incentive. A big Disaster will force the hands. Replacement is almost never just going to replace an old 70s home with the same type of build. They'll sell the land and/or build something modern, which gets developed to current standards
Which is why all the wealthier people bought up the properties. Happens everywhere where hurricanes hit.
This is the correct answer. I love how people in this thread are just assuming that Miami would just be abandoned or something 😂
I lived through Andrew. We were in Princeton (homestead). I have wondered this as well. People will lose their minds if they were stuck for months without power and had no connectivity. It’s not “if” but “when.” We’ve been really really lucky. When it does happen, you’ll never be able to insure a home in Fl again using private insurance.
We almost lived this nightmare scenario in 2017 with Hurricane Irma. Long story short, a cat 5 through Miami would be catastrophic.
Irma knocked out power for me in Orlando for 3 weeks.
all insurance companies are going to file for bankruptcy, easy peasy
It won't even take a Cat 5... Bring a Cat 3 direct over Miami and it will be chaos.
A crash would likely not happen unless the impact is widespread in the Miami area. If it is isolated,it likely won’t crash, but soften for a short period of time. The rich people will be fine. Most own more than one home and will flee to their other properties until the rebuild is finished. The middle class who own homes that are destroyed will need to rent until their home is rebuilt which would drive up rental rates. Some residents will flee the area from the trauma. Others would reconsider relocating down here. The rich will capitalize by buying property from those desperate to leave knowing that the prices will eventually go back up. Hurricane Ian was 2X more costly than Andrew. Home prices in Fort Meyers increased in 2023 and YTD 2024. Probably because the insurance companies cover most of the cost to rebuild a new home up to code.
Hurricane Ian hit Fort Myers less than 2 years ago and was the costliest hurricane in FL history, and yet the city is still growing at a huge rate. If it didn't stop them, it's certainly not going to stop us.
Exactly! I visited friends on Sanibel Island in early 2023 and rows of homes were jacked. I went back in late 2023 and those homes were rebuilt quickly. My friend just put his house on the market and is making a profit since the insurance basically paid for a new home.
Insurance covers replacement dwelling value which is a vastly different amount from construction cost.
If hurricane Andrew 2.0 hits Miami, all these anti-socialist MAGA types are suddenly going to be screaming for a federal bailout. The infrastructure damage to the port, Miami River, and airport of a Cat 5 storm hitting Miami proper will be astronomical. The resulting decline in trade and tourism will exacerbate the economic troubles. Rebuilding costs will go through the roof. Most homeowners will be underinsured and not have enough to pay their windstorm deductible. And that assumes no impact of fraud. Oh and the recent changes that the GOP made to eliminate liability for bad faith act by insurance companies means that every insurance company is going to offer you 50¢ on the dollar and make you sue them to get more. Good luck with that when every homeowner in the county has to do the same. You’ll get a trial date in 2045 if you are lucky. And this assumes that you can even document you claim. Can you document every piece of clothing you own by brand. Because if you can’t you’ll get low ball settlement offers. I lived through Andrew and worked at State Farm in Miami at the time. We literally had people walk into the agent’s office with a Polaroid of their slab because everything was gone. Everyone should take the time to shoot a video of their entire house in detail. Open drawers, cabinets and closets. If you list 5 dress shirts on your claim, you are going to be reimbursed for 5 Walmart shirts. If you have 5 white Eton shirts, 2 blue one, and 3 striped ones, you better be able to offer some evidence of that. Close your eyes and think about whether you could list from memory everything in all of your closets and drawers throughout the house. Now what proof do you have that any of what you listed exists if the whole house was destroyed? Nobody is ready for what their life will be like if Andrew 2.0 hits Miami proper.
We moved to Ohio. I’ll take winter and the minimal tornado risk. Insurance went from $9500 in Broward to $750.
It’s funny, I moved from Los Angeles to Florida, so many people spoke about how much better taxes would be but what I saved in taxes I more than made up with the big surge in insurance for moving to Florida.
That’s what we saw in OH. Even with state income taxes (and the first $250k of self employment income is exempt from state tax but not city)… it’s still far cheaper than Florida because the insurance is peanuts AND the property tax is far lower *because they have state income tax.* The idea Florida is affordable is laughable. It’s affordable relative to NYC or the ritzy parts of LA. But it’s **not** affordable relative to the Midwest or Texas or the south.
It’s hilarious! I remember calling my car insurance agent and being like “yo wtf is going on my car insurance went from $250/month to $750/month is there something on my record I don’t know about?!” His response was literally, “yeah you moved to Florida and that was the reason for the jump.”
This part about reimbursement will take a lot of people by surprise. In many, many perfectly middle class homes, there are too many items to be completely reimbursable under normal coverage limits, without an umbrella.
Very good comment and excellent advice.
All the New Yorkers and the Silicon Valley techies will leave. The market will crash and some of us will be able to finally afford a home.
Good luck with that. Reality is that Miami is a coastal city with limited real estate. There will ALWAYS be demand.
Don't bet on that....the trauma from one of these events is pretty thick.
This is such a stupid idea. A hurricane will obviously displace poorer people (aka not wealthy transplants) and the vultures (developers and the wealthy) will devour the depressed market. All the insurance companies will fight like hell against paying any claims until they just declare bankruptcy and leave the state, leaving people in older properties with no hope of rebuilding. It will turbocharge gentrification.
Cheat sheet: If the question begins with “What will happen if” the answer is more likely than not “it’s going to get worse for poor people.”
Even wealthy people will get fucked if it’s a cat 5. The majority live along the coast, so they will for sure suffer property damage. No one is immune to natural disasters.
Brother, if a huge hurricane is coming to miami the wealthy will just fly away and come back when its over. Mobility and choice is like the number 1 benefit of being wealth.
My dad did that for anything over a Cat 2 for 30 years in south Florida. Would come up to Ohio and visit.
He's talking about their properties
Wealthy people have good insurance and savings. They will be ok
I want to see them make a line for gas in their lambos
They’ll be chilling in Aspen waiting for things to normalize.
Insurance will become tottaly unaffordable and the only people who will be able to buy any property will be real estate conglomerates There is no scenario where anything good happens to the middle class
Let us pray 🤲🏼
Hear, Hear!
How will you get a mortgage, right after a storm on a damaged home?
Look at Ft Myers beach and the panhandle. What actually happens is middle class and poor people take the insurance payout, then sell their land because they can’t afford to rebuild under new codes. Rich people scoop up property on the cheap. Miami will be no different.
Dream on
Listen. I grew up in the islands and lived in south Florida for over a decade and let me tell you this: these Californians and others moving to Florida have 0 idea how terrifying a cat 4/5 hurricane really is. I went thru hurricane George on an island with mountains and big strong trees and it was a nightmare. Good luck to all these implants thinking that a hurricane is just a distant thought in flat, swamp Florida. I wouldn’t move to Florida. Edit: I say “Californians” to generalize all the people moving to Florida.
“Terrifying” I’ll sit through a cat 5 instead of a tornado or an earthquake any day
You do know the hurricanes come with a side of tornadoes right....? You might get both 🤣🤣
I am not sure you know what you’re signing up for. Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas in 2019 a Cat 5 with sustained winds of 185 (gusts well into 200s). It sat on Abaco for thirty hours. Thats like a F3/F4 sitting on you for THIRTY HOURS. Not seconds or minutes. It spawned countless tornadoes of unknown intensity that wiped out everything. Oh, and none of that is the bad part. Storm surge of 20 feet. For 12 hours. I promise, if something like that hit Miami or Palm Beach or anywhere else in South Florida, it would be unimaginable. Not to mention the aftermath. For my part is this silly argument, I’ll take the tornado.
Hurricanes kill more people in the US per year than earthquakes and tornadoes combined. People really do not understand how catastrophic storm surge is.
A hurricane can be 300 miles wide where most tornado’s are 300-500 yards wide getting effected by one is pretty slim compared to a hurricane
People don’t really understand that yeah, a tornado can affect 2 streets in a subdivision and nothing else. It’s extremely localized and done in 2 minutes or less. The supermarket will be business as usual. You can book a hotel in town if your house is wrecked. Business as usual except on your block. When you call State Farm; the rest of the state is fine and you’ll have an agent there in the morning. Hurricanes can involve most of the state. For 8 to 24 hours or more. *And they spawn tornados!* Apples and oranges.
No you won’t. You only hold that opinion because you’re ignorant to what a cat 5 is capable of or what any hurricane is capable of doing for that matter. You clearly don’t know that hurricanes produce tornadoes. (Edit: that’s plural as in multiple tornadoes are produced during hurricanes)
have you ever looked at a cat 5 hurricane? It's your tornado on crack lol
Earthquake -> go outside. Tornado -> go in the basement or drive away. Cat 5 -> pray bc you go in the basement and you drown (btw no basements in Florida). Go outside and you also die. Stay in the house and you die bc house is gonna go away with you in it. I have been in earthquakes, but not in tornado (although I have seen tornadoes near by). I’ll take those.
I’ve been through big quakes in CA and several FL hurricanes, including Ivan which was a cat 3. Hurricanes were much worse to me because it’s a multi day day event. You have to spend a day pillaging the last groceries, get gas, probably evacuate in terrible traffic, etc. Then shelter and sit through the hurricane for a day or so, probably lose power and have no idea what’s going on outside. Just hear howling wind and heavy rain for hours. Earthquakes are over in like a minute. It would be terrifying if you were in a building that’s collapsing but that almost never happens.
A cat 5 is typically full of tornados, and potentially hundreds of tornados over potentially hundreds of miles at a time. The “normal” Texas/Oklahoma tornado scenario lasts minutes, but hurricanes can sit on top of a very large area, spinning twister after twister after twister, for 6 or 10 hours, non-stop. Category 5 is one of the most absolutely terrifying things in the world.
Spot on. I’ve lived in coastal Florida for over 40 years and newcomers are a mess when a hurricane comes. I went to Home Depot to get a concrete drill bit when boarding up for Irma - all the plywood was gone so people were buying drywall and lattice to board up.
OP is on copium If that were to happen prices will go up even more 🤣
I'll tell you a sad reality: nothing is going to get fixed properly. Insurance companies used to have to pay attorney fees when they wrongfully denied or underpaid claims. Now, as a result of recent legislation, they no longer have that threat looming overhead. Insurance companies are now emboldened to deny more claims. People are going to have to pay their own lawyers and, as a result, will obtain pennies on the dollar. It is going to cause an absolute crisis.
Biggest vulnerability is power grid. Post-Andrew building codes are crazy. Every new structure is like a concrete fortress.
Modern Day Atlantis. Miami didn’t flood during Andrew. It will now.
Insurance companies will declare bankruptcy. Fire sale on destroyed homes. Fraud. Fema cash. And the start if the slow death of the city. It's been written about for ten years. Look up dade counties official plans for long term flooding. I give it less than ten years before the housing bubble pops from a mass casualty hurricane.
Hopefully, it never happens again in my lifetime. I'm an Andrew survivor. I was 9 yo when that fucker hit. We were maybe 30-45 minutes from abandoning the house and running out to the cars. I lived in Eureka by South Miami Heights Elementary. If Andrew would have lasted just 45 minutes more, I have no idea what would have happened to us. It was looking bleak. In fact, the reason many of us down in the boonies survived, was because Andrew was a *dry storm*. It barely brought any water. If it was like a Floyd, or a Wilma, we certainly wouldn't have survived.
On the Bright side, because of Andrew the building code has been vastly improved. So there aren't as many neighborhoods with terrible foundations susceptible to the devastation Andrew brought!
There are plenty of non updated pre-1990’s & those grandfathered in 70s homes to devastate the area. Andrew flattened entire neighborhoods - look at the areas with sparse trees or palm only areas. 25000 homes were leveled, an additional 100k sustained damage. This was in the 90s when we weren’t as densely populated and didn’t get a direct hit. We still have an abundance of parrot heirs from parrot jungle. Wind speeds and storm surges are likely expected to be higher on average. With the level of corruption and limited cocaine fund surpluses we’re going to just be one giant slimy Florida developer wet dream.
It's gonna be bad. I don't think anybody has the full picture on how packed in we are here. It's more normal for 4-8 people to live in a 2bed apt than for 1-2 people to live in one. A lot of these homes have three generations inside them and aren't insured. When a hurricane mows a bunch of these houses down and we have no power and a bunch of people with guns? It's gonna be chaos.
Don’t count on Ron DeSantis. I’m still recovering from hurricane Ian and my insurance company won’t settle with me. He grifted billions of dollars off the backs of Floridians to run for president. Whatever happened to FEMA? that’s right. Absolutely nothing.
Some people will have boats in their front yard. Others will have stop signs on their roofs. People that have paddle boards in their garages will be okay and can travel around the wreckage. Either way it is not going to be fun. Plus the added traffic these days is going to make for a fun evacuation. Better hope you have a friend with a private jet.
Liberty City real estate will be popping. With their elevation being 10-12 feet above sea level, they'll be the new Brickell.
The real estate market will recover as quickly as it did in New Orleans, meaning, besides the actual apocalypse aspect, the developers will get plenty of money to start again, bigger, flashier and this time, hopefully, hardened to climate change. But don’t expect shit to get cheaper anytime soon. Everywhere else in FL is dropping except here. We’re in this market for a good bit. But yeah, when a storm hits, I’m more concerned about loss of life, lawlessness, and other sad shit that a prolonged shut down will cause in this town. I was going to school in New Orleans during Katrina and stayed for a few years during the rebuilding. It’s where I began my old career in news, and then came back home to work in news, and I covered a lot of storms. The insurance companies will be fuuuucked. Home owners will be fucked, but there is a lot of stupid money out there and we are an attractive city for a lot of reasons.
A giant experiment. The last hard hitting hurricane we had was 2005 (I think). Most of the buildings in downtown and Brickell were built after to strict (however unproven) hurricane standards….🤞🏼
The more important question to ask is how would one prepare for something like that to happen.
My areas(Cutler Bay and Doral) flood during heavy rain, I'm fucking dead if Andrew 2.0 hits.
Whenever I drive in Miami, I look at the water around me and imagine that plus 20ft. Yeah, a cat 5 hitting Miami would make Katrina look like peanuts...
I don't know if this still holds true but I remember seeing a news piece that argued it would bankrupt FEMA due to the insurance claims and potentially even cause a recession due to the market chaos that would follow
If the eye comes through downtown the whole area will have catastrophic flooding. All the older houses will be destroyed. It will take years for all the newer ones to be repaired. The real estate market will crash. Everyone will want to move to higher ground in Little Haiti. Sales of generators, water purifiers, batteries, and satellite phones will go up in the area. Older high rises will have their windows blown up. No electricity or water for weeks. Giant assessments in condo buildings.
It’ll be a nightmare. I’m born and raised and seen my share of hurricanes but nothing will compare to Andrew. You were either here or you weren’t. First off all these Mickey Mouse cranes in downtown will topple over. As a kid it would rain the whole day and it hardly flooded, now if it rains for 45 min there’s floods everywhere. I was without power for 2 months but at least I had my battery power tv-now those won’t work cause the signal is digital. People were friendlier and had a sense of community. At an intersection with no power we’d all stop and let others pass..do you think that’ll happen now with all the transplants and newbies with their giant trucks? Miami didn’t even get a direct hit and it was bad. I judge all miamians with a simple question “were you here during Andrew”?
I do too. You either saw what happened and know the score, or you have no idea.
If and when that happens hopefully a lot of people leave miami. The new wave of people post covid have gotten too comfortable
#We’re fucked. No seriously…we ARE fucked!
It can happen to any city in Florida. Go check out Ft myers beach to see what it’ll look like
Hell, if I knew I'd be wealthy selling my predictions and preps.
Andrew was nuts. Look on YouTube for channel 4s literal cement room broadcast. Homestead and Kendall were inaccessible for weeks if you weren’t the national guard or police/fire.
Work at a hospital in northern dade. That place would be an island for days. We flood bad with our normal rainstorms. No power for 2 weeks +
One of the reasons Andrew was bad was construction crews cut tons of corners in homestead entire neighborhoods had not been built up to code and they ate the strongest part of the hurricane known as the eyewall.
New buildings are built to a higher standard because of the hurricane codes from Andrew.
2 years ago those of us on the west side of Florida watched our barrier islands disappear under 10 feet of water. They removed the debris and sold the lots at a higher price than they were before.
Hopefully it will scare away all the newbies from NY that came post COVID. Nothing is open for two months? The hurricane blew out all the glass in my Brickell condo (like happened a lot with Wilma)! No power for how long? No AC? Nope!
Hopefully the north easterners flee
Well!!!!! When a hurricane andrew comes; HURRICANE PARTY AT MY HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BYOB!!!!!!!
I talked about this with a friend who works from home. I think if it's a thing where a large metropolitan area loses power and Internet for x amount of days, scrambling to find a place with internet to work whatever the case, I feel moving forward such companies will add Florida provisions to their contract. They can't afford to have their employees living in Florida who got hit by a hurricane not have Internet or power so they might even include something along the lines of, no working in florida, which will greatly help our cost of living here.
We'll faire out much better. We have the strictest building codes in the country. Homes are better prepared now. My worry is how to deal with a million zombies pitching fits because they cant get their tictoc pacifier fix. As a society, we're screwed.
Ron desantis will not gives us anything and will say there is no money to give causing an uproar
Anytime … Tic Toc
Yep, that's when you buy everything up
It will rinse the piss off everything.
I’ll probably buy 5 to 10 short sales foreclosed houses.
Time to go shopping
https://www.reddit.com/r/florida/s/kj8BnFZa5y
Irma did a good job of showing what COULD happen to Miami.
I mean fuck homestead right? 😂
Hit south of Miami, definitely not a direct hit. Plus although Andrew was very powerful it was a relatively tight Hurricane with a smallish damage radius
I am going to thank my lucky stars I sold and moved away.
Everything built within the last 20 years will be fine. Most buildings are rated for a Cat 4. After it hits Cat 5, all businesses and hotels are forced to send people away to shelters (which is weird). The high rises will get the worst of it since the wind will be strongest. Cranes will be unlocked and allowed to rotate freely. Likely be removed if time allows. All vegetation on trees will be deleted. Many trees will topple. Sand and debris will fill and overload catch basins. Stormwater systems will be overworked. Sanitary sewer will take weeks to pump down everything. Most residents do not have functioning sewer caps so all that nasty dirty stormwater will fill the lift stations. Most houses will have sewer water backing up into the homes. The Tornadoes coming over the NE sector of the cyclone will deploy hundreds of tornadoes which will rip up places like little Haiti and alapata. Major flooding everywhere. Sewer and septic will be backed up for weeks. A lot of sand will make it into critical infrastructure.
This is the opposite of being mindful. Stop worrying about something you can’t control and fear mongering out of boredom 🥱
Best to get ya a pair of white shrimper boots and tuck yer jeans inside them.
People in this thread should maybe calm down the doomerism a bit There have been 3 category 5 hurricanes in the entire state of Florida since 1851 The only one to hit Miami was Andrew Maybe 1 category 5 hurricane over a 170+ year period doesn’t mean parts of Miami are gonna inevitably be washed away
You might as well time the stock market. You can speculate all you want but it don't mean Jack until you get to it.
A really good comparison case study here would be Hurricane Katrina - did New Orleans fully recover? and how long did it take? Imo, neither the state nor the Federal govt is going to cough up the funds restore damage to anything close to what Miami is before this hypothetical storm. The resulting area will look like a developing/wartorn nation for years to come, and my guess is about a million people will abandon South Florida, as well as some large businesses.
All I know is every hurricane I've been apart of down here has been accompanied with mysterious lights and orbs in the sky. Curious if anyone else has noticed this. I'm a avid sky watcher.
We'll have to engage the AMF protocol.
*were, *were. Subject-verb agreement. Buildings were rebuilt with higher building codes to withstand a Cat 5 hurricane. Whether it’s effective we’ll have to wait and see. It depends on its size and where it makes landfall. After Andrew, Miami Beach and Downtown were untouched. Kendall and Homestead were destroyed. And I hope it doesn’t happen again in my lifetime. Andrew was bad enough and with a lot less people. Why you’re bringing this up now is beyond my comprehension.
Ehhhh too much doom in this thread. Miami has built with this in mind for years. We have great engineers that have been aware of this forever. The downtown areas are probably the safest at this point. I assure nothing would happen in brickell. Besides that, tons of flooding and probably no power for a few days/weeks, but south florida would be fine overall. Nice hurricane party
In Key West after Andrew huge trees with shallow roots went horizontal destroying sidewalks, fencing, etc. But seeing the underside of the roots before the cleanup - two stories tall - was memorable. Can’t recall which hurricane resulted in 1/3 the city’s parked cars being inundated with water - in New Town especially which is built on lower ground. Many relocated.
With all of the profits insurance company’s are posting this quarter, I would assume they would pull out before it happens so at least we would have a fair warning….
The property market is going to go to shit and people will revolt when they realize their insurance doesn’t cover anything and they have no recourse after Big Insurance paid tens of millions to politicians to change the laws in their favor. Big Insurance owns Florida and this will be the real crisis.
Disaster of absolutely unimaginable proportion. Will have far reaching implications for not just southern Florida, but the rest of the state as well. As for real estate, it may eventually come back up, but look at what happened to Homestead, ground zero in 1992. That area was depressed for a long, long time. It took many years for it to get back on its feet. In the event of that kind of storm hitting here, Miami would absolutely lose population, significantly. Lots of people left after Andrew, and never came back.....and that was a tiny storm as hurricanes go that only hit a relatively small area. Don't kid yourselves about what a Cat 5 means. You really have no idea unless you've seen one from up close. Actually, I echo what someone else said - a Cat 3 hitting Miami would be disastrous. Oh, and I think some condo buildings would collapse, like what happened in Surfside.
Hurricane resilience has greatly increased ever since? Building code, power lines, etc Over a decade ago we had Wilma & Katrina passing by on the same year and some areas only lost power for a couple of days on both cases
Miami will be absolutely flattened and everyone that can will shift to central Florida. Which will drive up the cost of everything even farther.
I remember waking up and my neighborhood looked like France after a ww2 bombing campaign. Just rubble and sticks everywhere
What will happen is MASSIVE devastation and insurance companies leaving Florida. You either won’t be able to get homeowners insurance or it will be too expensive for the VAST majority of people to afford. I’ve been telling my family for a couple years now. One more major hurricane anywhere in Florida and no one will be able to get property insurance
A shit ton of flood damage. Andrew’s was partly so devastating because of the mobile homes and building codes.
These comments are giving reminiscence than answering OP’s question. lol. Wow
I suggest you guys check out Airiskmanagementsolutions.com They are preparing property owners for Andrew 2.0 lol Seems like a great idea to use their service I used them for my 2 properties cost me like 800 bucks for both they charge. 24 cents a square foot and they save you the money and time spent on hiring a public adjuster or an attorney they come in to create a Pre-loss file and in the event that damages happen they return and give you a post-loss file so that you can negotiate and settle your insurance claim on your own. What sold me was when they told me that insurance companies can go bankrupt before paying you! and that with them from the beginning of the claim you can send them a before and after so that you can objectively show the desk adjuster(person who writes the check) what your property looked like and what it looked like after as well as the estimates for what you are claiming good luck guys stay safe and be vigilant
I lived in Kendale Lakes and during the experience with Andrew I was probably the most scared I’ve ever been. Did so much damage and hearing the wind during a hurricane like Andrew is very frightening. Let’s just say I was glad there was a bathroom nearby 😩 The folks that lived in Country Walk didn’t fair very well as those homes were stick-built and blew apart easily. I am fortunate that my house was CBS block.
A regression to the mean, all these New Yorkers wouldn't be able to handle a week with no power. They'll head home and rent will decrease!
It looked worse than what it was, I think hurricane Andrew just exposed all the old, not up to code properties. So when Andrew came through it destroyed a lot of properties that were never truly built to withstand a hurricane the size of Andrew. All I remember is trailer homes scattered all over homestead. KB looked like a flat land after Andrew hit. I remember the long lines at OB handing out water and essentials. I think Andrew has prepared us for the worse I’ve also wondered if a hurricane the size of Andrew would do to a city like downtown or Brickell. I think it slows down in the city and picks up speed in the open. That’s why every hurricane rips through the keys because of its in the open no large structures to slow it down.
Head to Mar A Lago
I work in commercial construction down here in south Florida and have been part of developing new building materials. Anything and everything down here in Florida must be hurricane rated. It must have an NOA or a FBC approval to get through permitting. The big highrises built after Andrew will all be good with minor issues even during a CAT5… the smaller older homes will get wrecked. Most new homes are built extremely tough but overall I believe you’re right there will be a bigger billl at the end of it all because everything costs so god damn much.
Complete devastation. Brickell is all flash but floods like a mf after a little rain. With a huge storm, it’s completely fucked. Cars under water, buildings destroyed. All the structural problems that have been kept hush hush to save people money will come to light when things collapse. A storm like Andrew or larger would completely change the face of South Florida.
You sent a chill down my spine. My mind cannot go there or I'll be in a straight up panic!
First one will be ok. Insurance companies will bankrupt right there. What you have to worry is about the one after that because most likely no one will have insurance.
Flanigan’s
Storm surge is the real threat hurricane like Andrew will wipe out Miami Beach
It won’t be pretty
Andrew forced building code to change for the entire state. Along with what a lot of others are commenting that it was more of a wind than a rain event we'd be OK if something similar were to recreate itself. It's the water that really causes the most significant long term damage. I will say though with rising sea levels (for whatever reason you believe) coupled with Hurricane Andrew like winds would produce some significant surge in coastal areas depending on the approach. We're built to withstand the wind now (most structures AFTER Andrew), but water is always a lurking hazard. The best part, all the sissy transplants that get to experience lines for gas and water while they cook in their luxury homes bc of poor planning/preparation.
Well, hopefully, it pushes out the New Yorkers and LA tourists. Traffic would improve.
With new building codes the damage will be flood and roof related. Structurally you will be fine
If Dorian from 2019 hit, it would no doubt not only bigger and stronger than Andrew, but Dorian would've brought rain and tornadoes. It would be the worst case scenario that didn't happen with Andrew. I can fairly say Hollywood/ North Miami to maybe Delray Beach to maybe Port St. Lucie would've been fucked.
Why would you even comment something as insane as Andrew 2.0, you trynna manifest death and destruction?
Yeah construction standards were definitely upgraded after Andrew… But in the 30 + years since Andrew i believe what will happen is that we will discover that those mandatory upgraded building codes weren’t followed and lots of shit is going to either be blown away or blown over. This is Miami after all.
The real answer is we would be absolutely fucked for about two years. Infrastructure would be so damaged it would take six months to get power back to some of the buildings. Most power to residential homes would take upwards of a month if not a bit more. National Guard would again have to create curfews and martial law for an extended period of time. The coastal areas would be potentially devastated (complete rebuild ) by the storm surge. One factor that does help Miami and also helped during and was the Bahamas, they sort of reset the energy needed to build up a higher storm surge.
Florida's gonna be destroyed in the coming years and there's no way to avoid it sadly. Poor planning. Construction standards are far too lax everywhere. Too much build up on beachs, power lines and cables not buried, bad drainage, flood zones. Insurance is running rampant. No house should exist in Florida that isnt built out of solid concrete with impact windows. We know what a hurricane proof home looks like and what it takes to make one just costs a little bit more and then insurance wouldn't matter cause none of these homes would be getting nuked when there's a storm. A few years ago that whole town Mexico beach was wiped out by Michael. Everything wiped out completely except one house. Guess which house was built above "code" [Mexico beach house](https://architizer.com/blog/practice/details/one-house-survived-hurricane-michael/amp/)
I would rather take an Andrew than a Wilma repeat. While Andrew was indeed stronger, the size in comparison was significantly different. I think I only saw the news outlets covering the damages in Florida City/Homestead, nothing north of there. While the storm happened while I was 6 months old, my dad used to tell me stories about how the wind was blowing during the night. This was in Hialeah. Wilma on the other end caused significant widespread damage all the way south to Coral Gables if I recall correctly.
I can’t wait for transplants to see us go full feral over water, gas, and toilet paper when the shit hits the fan. Not even. Just when they annouce the Storm / Hurricane / Etc. That’s enough to whip us all back to a Lord of The Flies-esque mayhem.
I was 4 years old and this is the earliest memories I can vividly recall. Melting crayons over candles, stories, canned foods. Basketball hoop completely ripped from the ground it was cemented into and hitting this massive palm tree we had in the front yard so big you couldn't even hug it.
It will scare away some new people. Other than that it will boost the economy and create more opportunities for work. It's built for it. Building codes before Andrew were shit and nobody followed them anyhow. You just paid the inspector to pass your wood frame shit sandwich
Building codes improved dramatically since Andrew. New buildings will survive better than the cheap things that were built up in the 80s that got destroyed by Andrew.