Twenty years ago this week, a Category 5 chainsaw called Hurricane Andrew cut a swath of ruin like no storm before it.
More than 28,000 homes were destroyed, 107,000 damaged — a toll that made it the nation’s costliest natural catastrophe until Katrina in 2005. Fifteen people were killed in Miami-Dade alone. Dozens more died in exhausting months of clean-up. Some 180,000 were left homeless, 1.4 million without power.
The numbers don’t fully explain the impact. South Miami-Dade resembled a post-war zone for one grueling summer — tent cities, food lines, soldiers on patrol, residents packing weapons.
