Hurricane History

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MIAMI (CBS4) ― Living through the aftermath of a category 5 hurricane is a terrible struggle, as hundreds of thousands of South Miami-Dade residents learned after Hurricane Andrew 15 years ago. As journalists, we've told the stories of the people who survived, only to lose everything, and then, struggled to rebuild. But what about the people who shared those tales of tragedy and triumph? Many in the CBS4 family left their own Andrew disaster every day, to go out and tell the stories of South Dade. The memories still bring deep emotion

"Horribly, I still remember it like yesterday. Huddled in a closet with all my loved ones, hearing the house exploding, not knowing if it was going to be there or not," remembers CBS4 consumer investigator Al Sunshine.

Al rode out Hurricane Andrew in his home west of Florida's Turnpike. The plan was for him to be in place to join a photographer who would meet up with him to cover the cleanup. Al had no idea that the cleanup would start with his own home.

He recalls the terrifying fury of Andrew, whose eye rolled right over his home.

"It's like what's next, worst over, boom, boom. Is this it. is there going to be more, boom, boom."

Dave Game, currently the manager of the CBS Internet operations in South Florida, was a reporter when Andrew struck. He was assigned to Richmond Heights Middle School on SW 152nd street to report on people riding out the storm in a shelter.

Dave was there because that shelter was supposed to be the closest 'safe' shelter away from the brunt of the storm. Instead, Andrew barreled right over the school, just a few miles from Al's home, and by coincidence, a mile and a half from his own home, where his wife was facing her first hurricane alone with 7 cats and two dogs.

The storm hit, and Dave lost communications with his wife. Outside, his team could hear chaos explode, and could only wonder what was happening outside.

Then, while waiting in the lobby of the school at the height of the storm, Dave and his photographer heard a pounding at the door. Police unchained it, and a family of five stumbled in from the fury.

Dave recalls doing the only thing he could think of; he stuck out his mike and asked the father why they were battling to a shelter in the face of the hurricane's fury.

"Even to this day, I won't forget the look on his face," Dave recalls, eyes tearing up 15 years later as he remembers. "He just said, 'it's not that hard to leave when your house blows down around you'."

The comment stunned everyone, raising even more fears about what they would find when the winds finally died down. Al Sunshine and his family were shell-shocked when they finally peeked out of the wreckage of their home.

"We probably looked and felt like World War 2 victims of saturated bombings," he said. That didn't stop him from taking a home video camera, and with the help of his wife, starting to documenting the chaos of his neighborhood, and his own home.

Reporter Lisa Petrillo, then at WPLG, was sent out to look for what was left. She had a hard time believing what she found.

"Got to Metrozoo. It was devastated. The aviary that was so beautiful, all the birds had gotten out," she remembers. The scope of the destruction amazed her, a memory still sharp after 15 years.

"When you walked into these places, we didn't think these places would get back up and running."

Dave Game remained at the shelter until the storm passed and he could get outside. As he and his crew walked out of the school, they found a landscape which looked like World War 3.

"It was like a nuclear bomb went off," he remembers. "We were lucky our car was safe, because dozens of others were junk."

His job was to cover the story, but his first thought was his wife, a mile and a half away in what had become akin to a war zone, unreachable by cell phone. Covering the disaster would wait until he reached her.

It took Dave an hour and a half to make the short trip to his home, 22 blocks away, and when he arrived, he found trees uprooted, windows blown out, half a roof; and his wife, safe inside. She had spent two hours in a closet with the pets, alone as Andrew beat at the door."

"It's hard to talk about it even today," he said, eyes glistening, voice halting.

"It's a little embarrassing to get this emotional about something, but I tell people all the time, who think they've gone through hurricanes, unless you've gone through something like this, you just don't have an idea."

"There is no way to tame nature's fury."

And then, like Al and the rest of the news team who were now suddenly part of the story, he stood in front of the camera and started telling the tale of Andrew, starting with his own survivors story.

(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)