ORLANDO, Fla. – In August 1992 it wasn’t hurricane supplies people were shopping for, it was school supplies.
With the school year set to begin, Hurricane Andrew was gaining strength in the Atlantic. Days later it would become the strongest and costliest hurricane, of that time.
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I was 5 years old, getting ready for kindergarten and living near Country Walk in Miami-Dade County.
I don’t remember much of the timeline before the storm, but what happened during and after has a permanent place in my memory.
To help look back at my experience, I sat down with my mother, Grace, to talk about her recollection of that night as we looked through old photos from family and neighbors.
“Initially, the storm was tracking to hit north of our area as a Category 1 hurricane,” Grace Campos said. “We took the preparations for this storm lightly and only did some basic prep work, hoping that would suffice. At that time, we did not have any special shutters or boards available to cover our windows and doors, and most of the stores were out of stock. I remember speaking with family who lived at the Dade-Broward line and wishing them well since at the time that was the new targeted area.”
I vividly remember going to bed Sunday night. It was a memorable bedtime because my parents placed our mattresses in the hallway outside a half bath as a precaution, even making me sleep in my light-up sneakers.
Andrew was forecast to impact north of Palm Beach the day before making landfall. But it wasn’t until the evening advisory on Aug. 23 when projections showed that Miami-Dade became the main target.
“We set the alarm for 1 a.m. and turned on the TV to see major changes in the forecast. Andrew was now a major hurricane, heading to southern Dade County. We then took more measures, like placing flashlights and supplies in the bathroom adjacent to the hallway, hoping that because of the tiled walls and bathtub we could at least better protect our daughter if things went bad,” Grace Campos said.
Overnight, my family and I woke up to the security alarm alerting us that we lost the front door. We quickly moved into the half bath, where we rode out the Category 5 hurricane for the next several hours.
My mother sat on the floor with her back against the door and feet pressed to the bathtub, while my dad stood for hours holding a pillow over the small window in hopes of keeping the room from caving in.
“The pressure inside our home was so strong that the door to the bathroom kept trying to open, but your dad had a rope tied around the handle and literally kept battling with it. Candace was sitting on the toilet seat with a big cushion over her head. I remember as a mother feeling helpless and praying that you would just fall asleep. Once you fell asleep, at one point, your dad and I said goodbye to each other, feeling we would not survive,” Grace Campos said.
It was a loud and scary night, and it felt like it went on forever. But I remember clearly listening to a voice on our small battery-powered radio. I didn’t know who he was, but he was calm, spoke slowly, walking us through every step of the storm.
The man explained in detail what we were hearing and what we were experiencing, like he was in the room with us. At one point in the night, it was like a switch turned off the storm and the winds stopped howling.
The meteorologist on the radio, however, warned us that the eerie silence was the eye of the storm. It was not the end. It was just the halfway point to our nightmare.
I describe the eye of a major hurricane to someone pressing the pause button on the TV. The typical ambient noise of life around us was gone. There was no breeze, no hum of air conditioners, the drone of passing of cars or even the chirping of birds. They are all ubiquitous sounds but when they’re gone, you notice.
It wasn’t until the storm was over the west coast of Florida that we finally emerged, and it was like opening the door to a new world. Our home from the day before was gone, a total loss.
“After what seemed like an eternity in that half bathroom, we heard the voice of one of our friends who lived two blocks away, calling out for us. When we opened the door of the bathroom, most of the furniture had been blown out. We had a couch left in the house that was wrapped with aluminum siding like a burrito. The whole neighborhood looked like a war zone, with military helicopters circling overhead. The rest of Florida had no idea how bad our area and further south had been devastated,” Grace Campos said.
Like many South Floridians, we built back stronger, learning the importance of preparedness and community. There were many lessons learned from Andrew, from better building codes to enhanced emergency responses.
But for me, it was the night I knew I wanted to become a meteorologist. I knew from that point on, I wanted to have the knowledge and information to help others like the “man on the radio.”