Aug 15, 2007 10:28 am US/Eastern
The Big One: On The Horizon
A Look Back At Hurricane Andrew, 15 Years Ago
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(CBS4)
It was the storm we all feared; the storm of our nightmares, and after years of skirting the danger, this one was headed right for us.
It was August 24th, 1992. Its name was Andrew, and was the first named storm of the year. It was also the first hurricane many residents of South Florida would ever face, and as we were to learn just 24 hours later, most of us were woefully unprepared.
Andrew was a monster, and he virtually gobbled up most of Miami-Dade County from Kendall Drive to Florida City. In the process, he changed lives and communities forever.
The storm began as barely a blip on the radar, The Friday before Andrew arrived, NOAA Hurricane hunters canceled their trip into the storm, because it appeared to be disintegrating.
A second trip was scheduled for Saturday the 23rd, and that too was almost scrubbed.
"They made the decision to go ahead," said Dave Game, a reporter for WCIX, the TV station that became WFOR, who was scheduled to ride along on the mission. "We were supposed to go through the storm three times to fix the position of the eye and take readings, and we were supposed to be up about 12 hours."
The hurricane hunters made a few rough passes through Andrew's eye and took data, which was sent to the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables.
They crunched the numbers, and Game recalls a conversation in the plane's kitchenette with Bob Burpee, the mission specialist who would later become director of the National Hurricane Center.
"I was trying to write my story," Game said, "and Burpee sat down with a concerned look on his face. I asked about it, and he asked me where I lived. I told him the name of the South Miami-Dade neighborhood, and he asked me if I had hurricane shutters."
Game thought that sounded ominous, so he admitted he did not and asked Burpee why. Burpee just looked at him and said, "You're going to wish you did."
What forecasters had learned was that Andrew had strengthened dramatically, into a category three hurricane, and was headed straight for South Miami-Dade.
Forecasters could not say exactly where it would hit, but they warned it would hit somewhere, and could be even stronger by landfall.
Suddenly in the storm's gunsights, South Florida was starting, at last, to prepare.
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