Under the Sun

This is a place that’s sunny, warm, and flat. It seems like it should be a pretty perfect place to ride a bike. It’s not.

Last month, the 36-year-old father, husband and amateur triathelte Aaron Cohen was hit and killed by a car while riding on the Rickenbacker Causeway. The tragedy revived a debate about how drivers and cyclists share—or don’t share—our roads.

If you’re a regular listener to WLRN, you might recognize the voice of Phil Latzman, anchor and host at WLRN.  Phil also happens to be one of NPR’s go-to guys whenever there’s a hurricane anyplace near South Florida. But it wasn’t always that way.

On the weekend before Hurricane Andrew hit in August 1992, Phil was young, living on South Beach, having a good time, playing basketball, going to the beach and listening to a lot of Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Under the Sun tells the stories of South Florida, and there’s no bigger South Florida story in recent history than Hurricane Andrew. Around 5:05 a.m. on  August 24th, 1992, Andrew made landfall near the Homestead Air Force Base, and  changed lives everywhere.

WLRN-Miami Herald News Reporter, Kenny Malone, spoke to a retired Army Colonel and semi-retired veterinarian, Richard McCormick, about his experience when the Category 5 winds arrived and it was raining cats and dogs.

There is a loud explosion as the roof is torn off. In my two years in Florida, this is the first time I have felt cold.

After Hurricane Andrew, ice became a precious commodity and a flashpoint of conflict.

Power was out, food was spoiling/rotting, and federal aid hadn’t arrived yet.

Deborah Gray Mitchell spent those first sticky days cleaning up debris outside her home in Belle Meade.

My friend brought us this gallon jug of ice, and in that gallon jug where it had melted a little bit was a little bit of water that that we could use to whet our whistle. It was just the most refreshing, happiest moment of my life to have a nice, cold drink of water.

Throughout the course of reporting the Remembering Andrew series we’ve been asking a few of the same questions about Hurricane Andrew to virtually everybody we interview. Things like:

When did you know it was time to take Andrew seriously?

When did you know Andrew had truly arrived?

But there’s one question in particular, that seems to trip people up:

What did you see the moment you stepped out of your door after Andrew?

You may think you know how you’d react during an emergency.  Andrea Askowitz thought she did.  Then came Hurricane Andrew.

Askowitz one of the co-founders of the Lip Service series in Miami.  During these performances, ordinary people tell true stories about their lives–on stage. Andrea Askowitz brings us her own true story about August 1992.  It’s called “In Case of Emergency.”

We’ve been listening to your stories and memories of Hurricane Andrew and life afterward. Many people have told us that one of their strongest memories from after the storm is how neighbors–who might have usually just walked from their car to their door without saying hello–banded together.

In one Cutler Bay neighborhood, people were already friendly and helpful. As the storm was coming, they helped each other put up shutters. But after the storm, the neighbors became a kind of surrogate family.

We first aired this piece five years ago, and we're bringing it back now to mark the 25th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew.  A happy update: Joe Johnson, the DJ who created this piece just a few days after the storm, is now WLRN's morning host. 

You can find a lot more stories about Hurricane Andrew, 25 years later, here. 

One of the themes that’s emerged as we commemorate the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew, is how the storm inspired a lot of good intentions, as well as just pure kindness.

In 2002, Homestead sought to commemorate the tenth year anniversary of the storm. The area had been, by far, the hardest hit during the storm.

Judy Waldman was on the Homestead City Council the year Homestead was planning the commemoration.

She said what struck her most about the time following the hurricane was the way people had banded together and helped their neighbors and strangers.

For Susan Holtzman, the really terrifying parts of Hurricane Andrew didn’t begin until the day after the storm.  Susan was nine months pregnant at Baptist Hospital in Kendall.  It was the day before she was due to give birth.

She compares what she saw to a movie: