On This Day in 1992: Hurricane Andrew Hits South Florida

On this day in 1992, Hurricane Andrew came ashore just south of Homestead in Miami-Dade County a little after 5 in the morning, with sustained winds near 165 miles per hour and a central pressure of 922 millibars. Andrew was compact, and that concentrated the damage. In Dade County alone it damaged or destroyed 125,000 homes and left at least 160,000 people without one. It later crossed the Gulf and struck south central Louisiana.

The failures were not random. Investigators found roofs stapled instead of nailed, gable ends with no bracing and windows with no protection, all of it permitted and inspected. Wind entered through a broken opening, pressurized the house and lifted the roof from inside. Homes built to the same code a few streets apart came through very differently depending on who had built them.

Florida responded with a statewide building code that changed what a new house is required to survive, which is why storms since have done less structural damage to newer construction. Older houses still carry the original assumptions, and the fixes that matter most are unglamorous. Shutters, roof straps and a garage door rated for pressure do more than any supply on the shelf, and they are the front half of how to be prepared for a hurricane. Where you sit on the map decides how much of it applies, and the places at risk of hurricanes reach well past the coastline.