In the Eye of Hurricane Andrew

By Eugene F. Provenzo Jr. and Asterie Baker Provenzo

University of Florida Press, 184 pages, $24.95

By Mark Davis

Recently, a bunch of scientists upgraded Hurricane Andrew from Category 4 to Category 5, thanks to technological advances and much-debated study during the last 10 years.

But whether the deadly storm was producing 150 mph or 250 mph winds, James McCoy experienced something he may never see again in his lifetime: neighbors being overly kind to one another.

"Everybody got along real well," the veterinarian remembers. "If you eliminate the air-conditioning and you eliminated the television, people find that they need the entertainment and the communication and friendship of other people and they’ll come out and talk. That is neat."

McCoy’s is one of dozens of eyewitness accounts that fill "In the Eye of Hurricane Andrew," an engaging book that tells the story of Andrew’s aftermath from the ground level. Based on interviews with survivors and rescue workers (and even journalists), the book manages to breathe humanity into a story flooded with grief and despair.

The dark details: Hurricane Andrew was one of the most powerful hurricanes to ever hit the United States. It slammed just south of Miami on Aug. 24, 1992, killing 43 people and causing at least $30 billion in damage. It was the most expensive natural disaster in the nation’s history. It spent less than a day in South Florida, but it forever changed the way the region and the state approach hurricanes and subsequent destruction.

Many books have bee written on Andrew (at least 20 in an amazon.com search), but this one is solely dedicated to telling the stories of the survivors. It’s not the definite account of the storm nor is it the most comprehensive or scientific. You won’t find earth-shattering statistics or gut-wrenching horror stories. But hearing how the hurricane affected the lives of ordinary men and women somehow brings a sense of totality and ingenuousness to the disaster.

The husband and wife authors, Eugene F. Provenzo Jr. and Asterie Baker Provenzo, are quite familiar with Andrew. They live in the region and had a front-row seat to all the mayhem. Provenzo is a professor of education at the University of Miami, which suffered some damage and played a significant role in the recovery effort. His wife is an author who has had works published on family and community history.

The Provenzos use only the first two chapters of their University of Florida Press publication to describe the coming and passing of Andrew. The rest is about relief efforts, rebuilding and dealing with the sociological and psychological aspects of having Mother Nature’s worst blowing down the door.

With such a mind-numbing catastrophe, it may be easy to dwell on the grimmer aspects of Andrew, like looting, insurance haggles and delayed federal aid. But the authors consistently find bright spots among the survivors’ stories, like those who chose to stick it out and rebuild instead of fleeing to safer shores.

Interestingly, the idea for "In the Eye of Hurricane Andrew" was born immediately after the storm. Eugene Provenzo began informally interviewing people as a way of coping and understanding what the storm had done. He wanted to create an eyewitness record of what happened, something deeper and more personal than newspaper and television reports.

Soon, a project was started as a collaborative effort with graduate and undergraduate honors students at the University of Miami during the 1992-93 school year.