Remembering Andrew: Hurricane Party
Podcast: Download
BY TRINA SARGALSKI AND PHIL LATZMAN
- Looking down Bird Road at trees damaged by Hurricane Andrew/ Photo by Cory McDonald (Florida State Archives)
If you’re a regular listener to WLRN, you might recognize the voice of Phil Latzman, anchor and host at WLRN. Phil also happens to be one of NPR’s go-to guys whenever there’s a hurricane anyplace near South Florida.
But it wasn’t always that way. On the weekend before Hurricane Andrew hit in August 1992, Phil was young, living on South Beach, having a good time, playing basketball, going to the beach and listening to a lot of Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Phil and his friends were in their early twenties. When it seemed that Andrew might hit South Florida, they thought, “Where’s the party?” They ended up at an apartment on the 12th floor of a building in Coral Gables. Best of all: the apartment had a terrace from which to view all of the action. They were drinking, talking, with the TV on in the background.
Phil spent some of that party on the terrace, filming with a video camera. He says he still has the tape somewhere, but sadly, he was unable to find it for this story “so that we could all see the stupidity.” Phil says:
“When things got really bad, the winds were strong enough to lift me up like a flag. I felt the angle of my body sort of lift up even further and all of a sudden, I was going to be standing straight up the back of my body was going to be straight up if I didn’t do something.”
His friends pulled him in to safety. For Phil, that experience and the weeks after the hurricane, were a time to grow up: “The realization of what followed–the blue roofs–the fact that people had nothing. I was like, ‘OK, I’m not rooting for a hurricane ever again.’”
He’s never told his teenage kids this story–”It’s embarrassing to admit you’re an idiot,” –but he wonders if the airing of this story might be a good opportunity. Anyone who’s a parent is probably familiar with the tough situation of being honest with children about bad decisions made in the past. Good luck, Phil!
This summer marks 20 years since Hurricane Andrew. And each week, we’re bringing you a story in our Remembering Andrew series.
Do you have your own Hurricane Andrew story to share? Whether they’re long or short, we need your stories for our “Remembering Andrew” series. Share your story through the Public Insight Network.
Songs in this piece: “Give it Away” and “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (some of Phil’s favorite songs in 1992) and “Under the Bridge” by Vitamin String Quartet.
Support for Remembering Andrew on WLRN comes from Best Roofing, South Florida’s forensic roof specialists.
Related Links
Hurricane Andrew on WLRN Tumblr
Richard McCormick on knowing when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em
Tags: Hurricane Andrew, Phil Latzman, podcast, Remembering Andrew
I am the daughter of a meteorologist and have lived my entire life in South Florida so I’ve experienced many hurricanes. Since my father flew with hurricane reconnaissance he would have to make all the preparations beforehand in order to leave my mother with 4 small children to weather these storms alone. So to say I have always taken Hurricanes quite seriously, may be an understatement.
With Hurricane Andrew approaching, they were evacuating the Keys so we had some friends drive up to weather the storm with us. We continued to secure the house while they nervously watched the news on the storm. By the time Homestead became an evacuation zone and our friends decided to leave and head north, it was too late for us to change our plans – we were bound by our decision to stay and continued our preparations…we shuttered every window and door, collected coconuts off all the trees and other possible projectiles from the property, filled the bathtub and every other container with water, moved my car into the garage leaving a little six foot section which we blocked off and lined with newspaper and then herded the geese in; we tied down everything we could, filled our little boat with water, brought the chickens in the aviary and made every preparation we could think of. My husband and I collapsed by 9:30 wondering if we’d done enough.
I should have known something was wrong when my father, the unshakeable meteorologist, called long distance from their retirement home in North Carolina to ask if we were going to stay in the house. He calmly said that we were in for a “bumpy night” and that he and Mom would be leaving in the morning to come down.
My husband and I tried to get a couple hours of sleep and woke up to the wind howling at 2:00am. I got fully dressed including watch and sneakers, as if planning to escape. We were both nervous and sat on the couch in the corner of the living room consoling the dogs, and listening as the wind increased when the power went off. Over the howling of the winds we heard a rattle; I took the flashlight to see what it was and found the sliding-glass doors onto the aviary were shaking and the glass had begun to bow in like I’d never seen! We quickly collected the dogs and retreated into the bedroom closet as it was the only place in the house away from sliding glass doors. In the closet I tried to keep the dogs calm and focus on getting a radio station on the little portable. The wind noise by this time was gone, replaced by a type of roar – described best as a freight train coming through the middle of the house. Our ears hurt and were popping as if from the pressure of a plane ride, and the roof was groaning. Peeking out of the closet we saw that it was raining in the bedroom and then there was an explosion followed by another in the living room. My husband kept looking out despite my pleas for him not to. He told me that the sliding glass doors in the living room had imploded. Another explosion – in the bathroom this time. And then the pressure seemed to lesson somewhat. We heard things blowing around and getting knocked over inside other rooms around the house. The fading radio said the eye had passed and was pleading for people not to be lured out by the calm. People were calling in the radio station, begging for advice as their houses were collapsing around them. All I could think of was that I could not face another half of this storm. Since the wind was diminishing we ventured out of the closet. We saw that it was morning through windows where the shutters had been ripped off. We began drastically trying to think of options – what could we do, where could we go if the other half of the storm were coming. But now the radio said it was over for most areas. Apparently the radar had been ripped from atop the Coral Gables Hurricane Center and they seemed as confused as we were.
We silently wandered the house in shock. There was shattered glass and mud everywhere – on every surface including up the walls and ceilings. The landscape outside was flattened as if an atomic bomb had gone off. After prying the front door open, we found what looked to be a mangled mobile home blocking the way out. The rubble- trees, clothing, furniture, pieces of windows, pots and pans, a piece of roof with smoke alarm still intact, paneling, a washing machine, mattress, books, pictures, children’s toys, someone’s paycheck, unidentifiable twisted metal and broken glass – everything you could imagine, covered the entire ground as much as several feet deep in places, so that you couldn’t even walk. There was not a leaf left on any bush or tree that was left standing. And no signs of life of any kind! It was like nothing I could have ever imagined.
Homestead would never be the same again. Nor would my husband and I be the same again. That’s how Andrew changed our lives.
Heidi,
What an amazing and frightening story. Thank you, thank you for sharing this with us!
While my sister Heidi, her husband, and my brother David lived through this event, and my parents phoning that they’d be ‘incognito’ for a few days, I helplessly awaited phone calls to confirm that everyone was OK. Heidi’s recalling of this event is just as she described over the phone almost 20 years ago…it is still that fresh in her mind. Her words are a reminder of what a hurricane can do & we all should seriously do whatever we can to be safe in one of these storms. Thanks little sis for the reminder.