Hurricane Andrew, August 1992, by Marcelle Ulvert
From MemoryArchive
Who: Marcelle Ulvert What: Hurricane Andrew Where: Miami, Florida When: August, 1992
Of the actual storm, I don’t remember much. My parents, my two siblings, and I watched TV in my parents’ bedroom waiting for the power to go out. At around 11 PM, everything went out so we turned on our flashlights and moved to the bedroom I shared with my sister. We listened to the radio, and within an hour my brother and I were already asleep. I woke up the next morning at around 8 AM and walked outside. The first thing I noticed was how beautiful the day was. The sky was completely clear, and the sun was so bright I had to shield my eyes and look at the ground. Then I noticed all the debris and uprooted trees. I couldn’t tell between the grass and the asphalt because everything was buried under fallen foliage. Luckily, I lived in the most elevated area of Miami so there was no flood damage in my neighborhood. Compared to other parts of Miami, especially where the eye passed over, we sustained very little damage.
We spent the days following Hurricane Andrew clearing debris and trying our best to deal with the heat. August is the most unbearable month in Miami with temperatures in the 90s and humidity at around 85%. The power lines were down which meant no air conditioning or even fans. As a seven-year-old, this seemed like the end of the world. I didn’t realize how fortunate I was until our cable was working again. Watching the news was a hard dose of reality. My family was still alive and my house intact. People less than a half hour away had literally lost everything. Pictures and videos taken from helicopters showed entire neighborhoods leveled by the storm. Others were inundated in several feet of water. I look at images of the damaged caused by Katrina and Rita, and I can’t being to fathom what those people are experiencing now.
