The Life and Time of Andrew

by Serena G.

 

Over the weekend, the sun was shining through the clear sky like a dog

running free in the meadow. Since the school year hadn't started yet, the

children were running and playing without any problems. Inside the houses,

parents were watching the watching the weather channel. The weather station

said they might issue a hurricane warning for the south end of Florida cause

Hurricane Andrew might hit them. And the parents wanted enough time to get

their children safe and sound into their houses. By the time Sunday night

came around, the wind reached between thirty and fifty miles per hour and the

weather channel said "it looks like Hurricane Andrew is heading right for the

Miami area."

About seven p.m. the weather station issued the warning, and the people

in the Miami area ran inside their houses. Some of the houses were protected

by wood on the windows or they used hard foil. Some houses weren't protected

and they are the ones that regretted later. With the sky getting dark and

the hurricane approaching from the Southeast side of Florida, the people of

Broward, Dade, and Monroe counties doing their last preparations for the

hurricane outside with the swirling winds.

After waiting for Hurricane Andrew to come and past, at three-thirty a.m., Hurricane Andrew finally touched land at Homestead, thirty miles away from Miami. When the eye of the hurricane set foot on land, the wind speed at the eyewall was at one hundred and fifty-five, which is the border line of a Category Four and Five. The winds took over everything in its path. The shingles of people's blew off and making them into torpedoes in search of a target. The hurricane picked up trees and shot them into houses and made some of the houses fall on themselves.

The storm surge was between fifteen and twenty feet above sea level.

Apartment buildings near the beaches were covered from the fourth floor down.

Some of the apartments couldn't take the pressure and fell. Ships that were

on the water were moved from their spots to up to fifty miles away in all

directions cause the winds made tremendous waves. The water and the heavy

downpour flooded the entire Dade, Broward, and Monroe counties. The side

streets in all three counties had five inches to a foot of rain. Near the

beaches the streets were all flooded from the rain and storm surge.

Hurricane Andrew was moving at thirteen to fifteen miles per hour. It

took Hurricane Andrew between three to five hours to get from the Atlantic

Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico crossing on Florida. After hours of destruction,

Hurricane Andrew left the place without looking back. Houses were left in a

heap of debris. When everyone went to look at the turmoil outside, they saw

trees uprooted, roofs torn off, animals from zoos died, lives lost, and

rivers, banks, lakes, and ponds were overflowing.