[1] [2] Ten years ago today I was huddled in the master walk-in closet of Condo Conner with my Mom and her Mom, watching Hurricane Andrew [3] on TV (Television) as it blew past us outside.
It was a very surreal experience.
Two weeks earlier I had moved out and into an apartment with two friends, Bill “Giant Hogweek” Lefler and Sean “Semigod” Williams (and there's a long story about those nicknames but that's for another time) and suddenly, here we were, faced with the biggest hurricane South Florida had seen in years (and the first one since Mom and I had moved down here to South Florida—Hurricane David (late August '79) had turned north at the last minute).
I had moved all my computer equipment to my second floor windowless office [4] at FAU (Florida Atlantic University) [5] (once of the nicer things about a second floor windowless office—the building was four floors high so the likelyhood of my office being flooded by Hurricane Andrew were pretty nil and if it did get flooded, we'd have more pressing things to worry about than just computers), and went down to Condo Conner to help Mom prepare for the worst.
A Class Five Hurricane [6] coming to town and the insipid Condo Association forbids hurricane shutters, or anything else that can possibly protect the units' windows from being installed.
Because, you know, hurricate shutters will detract property values …
Sorry, I digress.
So we move everything we can inside, move as much as I can away from the windows and get everyone inside one of two areas in Condo Conner that doesn't have a window—the master walk-in closet [7] (the other being the master bathroom [8]).
I then spend the rest of the time watching Brian Norcross [9] cover Hurricane Andrew.
We were lucky. Very little damage in the area (mostly downed trees). Others not so lucky; Mark [10] (who lived in Miami at the time) ended up with a traffic signal sitting on his bed. And he was lucky compared to those living in Homestead [11] …
[1] /boston/2002/08/24/andrew.thumb.gif
[2] /boston/2002/08/24/andrew.gif
[3] http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/1992andrew.html
[6] http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshs.shtml
[7] http://www.conman.org/people/spc/writings/hypertext/condo/34.html
[8] http://www.conman.org/people/spc/writings/hypertext/condo/33.html
[9] http://www.wildweather.com/mom/norcross.htm
[10] http://www.conman.org/people/myg/
![[1] /boston/2002/08/24/andrew.thumb.gif](/gemini.conman.org/boston/2002/08/24/andrew.thumb.gif){kind=link}
![[2] /boston/2002/08/24/andrew.gif](/gemini.conman.org/boston/2002/08/24/andrew.gif){kind=link}