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Hurricane Andrew revealed inadequate construction practices were utilized in Florida for decades. In response, Florida adopted a new statewide code-the 2001 Florida Building Code (FBC)-which became one of the strictest in the nation. We use 10 years of paid insured loss data to show that the FBC reduced windstorm losses by up to 72%, then use our results to conduct a benefit- cost analysis (BCA). The FBC passes the BCA by a margin of $6 in full reduced loss to $1 of added cost, with a payback period of approximately 8 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debris generated by disasters can hinder relief efforts and result in devastating economic, environmental, and health problems. In this study, we present a decision-support tool employing analytical models to assist disaster and waste management officials with decisions regarding collection, transportation, reduction, recycling, and disposal of debris. The tool enables optimizing and balancing the financial and environmental costs, duration of the collection and disposal operations, landfill usage, and the amount of recycled materials. In addition to post-disaster operational decisions, the tool can also support the challenging task of developing strategic plans for disaster preparedness. We illustrate the applicability and effectiveness of the tool with a disaster scenario based on Hurricane Andrew. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on natural disaster hospital management in North America. It discussses the natural disaster management following the eruption of the Mount Saint Helens in Washington on May 18, 1980, the hurricanes Andrew in Homestead, Florida on August 24, 1992 and Katrina on August 29, 2005, and wildfires and heat waves.

Disasters and displacement increasingly affect and challenge urban settings. How do pregnant women fare in the aftermath of a major disaster? This paper investigates the effect of pregnancies in disaster situations. The study tests a hypothesis that pregnant women residing in hurricane-prone areas suffer higher health risks. The setting is Louisiana in the Gulf Coast, United States, a state that continually experiences hurricane impacts. The time period for the analysis is three years following the landfall of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. We analysed low birth weight and preterm deliveries before and after landfall, as a whole and by race. Findings support an association between hazards and health of a community and indicate that pregnant women in the affected area, irrespective of race, are more likely to experience preterm deliveries compared to pre-event births. Results suggest there is a negative health legacy impact in Louisiana as a result of hurricane landfall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on her family's preparation before hurricane Andrew made a landfall in Florida in August 1992.

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Disaster impacts result from interactions between hazard exposure, physical vulnerability, and social vulnerability. We report empirical work from 1992′s Hurricane Andrew in Miami-Dade (FL) and 2008′s Hurricane Ike in Galveston (TX) to assess long-term trends in housing recovery. Longitudinal, parcel-level data on housing units along with neighborhood sociodemographic data permit analysis of the pace of recovery for different neighborhoods, populations, and housing types. Housing recovery is highly uneven for different population groups. Unsurprisingly, damage has major consequences; even after four years, the effects of damage are evident in the rebuilding process. Social vulnerability factors play differently in different settings. In Miami, income and race and ethnicity were critical determinants of higher losses and slower recovery rates, while in Galveston income was the more critical factor, with housing in lower-income areas suffering more damage and lagging significantly in the recovery process. Takeaway for practice: Effective land use policy and building codes can reduce physical vulnerability and ultimately damage, thus enhancing resilience for all. Differentials in impact and recovery trajectories suggest that assessment and the monitoring of recovery is critical to target resources to areas that are lagging. Perhaps most important is having an effective plan in place that addresses housing recovery issues to help reduce long-term consequences. Pre-event planning for housing and social change can help support community vision and overcome inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on challenges experienced by conflict and dispute resolvers related to their alternative dispute resolution post-disaster responses. Topics discussed include the role played by ADR practitioners in resolving conflicts, the responses of dispute resolvers to the September 11, 2011 attacks and the use of ADR in post disaster responses in the handling of disaster related matters such as Agent Orange and Hurricane Andrew.

This is the first study of a natural disaster ( Hurricane Andrew) in which psychological and neuroendocrine data were collected 1-4 and 9-12 months afterward. Data were assessed using a community sample ( N = 111) of hurricane survivors. Elevated posttraumatic stress symptoms (intrusive and avoidant thoughts) and stress hormones that initially were twice normal control values decreased significantly over time and returned to levels of non-hurricane controls by the end of the year. In contrast to previous reports, suggesting low cortisol in posttraumatic stress disorder ( PTSD), our sample had elevated cortisol, perhaps due to the nature of the trauma (i.e., natural disaster vs. crime, rape or war), our timing, or getting samples a few months after the event. In addition, the decrease in stress hormones over the year (cortisol and epinephrine [ E]) was related to a decrease in psychological symptoms of trauma. Cortisol and norepinephrine ( NE) were both related to the hurricane experience as well (damage and rebuilding; damage and disruption). Gender differences showed women reported more distress, but men had higher NE and cortisol. Finally, cortisol correlated most consistently both cross sectionally and longitudinally with reported days ill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of disaster relief as an entitlement under American laws in the 20th century, focusing on then-U.S. President George H.W. Bush's handling of the damage caused by Hurricane Andrew in states such as Florida and Louisiana in August 1992. The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is addressed, along with blame and culpability for an allegedly slow response to the 1992 natural disaster. Populist and progressive political movements in America are examined.

Two linear methods, including the simple linear addition and linear addition by expansion, and numerical simulations were employed to estimate storm surges and associated flooding caused by Hurricane Andrew for scenarios of sea level rise (SLR) from 0.15 m to 1.05 m with an interval of 0.15 m. The interaction between storm surge and SLR is almost linear at the open Atlantic Ocean outside Biscayne Bay, with slight reduction in peak storm surge heights as sea level rises. The nonlinear interaction between storm surges and SLR is weak in Biscayne Bay, leading to small differences in peak storm surge heights estimated by three methods. Therefore, it is appropriate to estimate elevated storm surges caused by SLR in these areas by adding the SLR magnitude to storm surge heights. However, the magnitude and extent of inundation at the mainland area by Biscayne Bay estimated by numerical simulations are, respectively, 22-24 % and 16-30 % larger on average than those generated by the linear addition by expansion and the simple linear addition methods, indicating a strong nonlinear interaction between storm surge and SLR. The population and property affected by the storm surge inundation estimated by numerical simulations differ up to 50-140 % from that estimated by two linear addition methods. Therefore, it is inappropriate to estimate the exacerbated magnitude and extent of storm surge flooding and affected population and property caused by SLR by using the linear addition methods. The strong nonlinear interaction between surge flooding and SLR at a specific location occurs at the initial stage of SLR when the water depth under an elevated sea level is less than 0.7 m, while the interaction becomes linear as the depth exceeds 0.7 m. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Catastrophe models help to evaluate the vulnerability of the building stock exposed to a hazard. This paper presents a history of the hurricane risk models in Florida, and discusses their relationship to the building codes. The first models were econometric, and failed to predict the insured building losses produced by hurricane Andrew. This led to a change in the loss projection paradigm and to the advent of modern catastrophe modeling. Advantages and challenges of the current methodologies are discussed, including the quality of input, validation, uncertainty, and scope of the outputs. The paper concludes with a brief overview of current and future research in vulnerability modeling. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Hurricane Andrew, which made landfall on August 24, 1992, was one of the most destructive hurricanes in American history, causing atypically high levels of psychological and physical health impairment among the resident population and especially among vulnerable groups. This article investigates whether maternal exposure to Hurricane Andrew during pregnancy increased the risk of dystocia (or dysfunctional labor) and infant delivery by cesarean section, the standard medical response to abnormal labor progression. We analyze 297,996 birth events in Miami-Dade and Broward counties in Florida from 1992 to 1993 using propensity score methodology with stratification and nearest-neighbor matching algorithms. Results show that hurricane-exposed pregnant women were significantly more likely to experience stress-induced abnormal labor and cesarean delivery outcomes as compared to statistically matched comparison groups. The conclusion details the policy implications of our results, with particular attention to the importance of maternal prenatal care in the aftermath of disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a proposal for a federal insurance program in the wake of various failed constitutional challenges to state cancellation moratoriums which were enacted after hurricanes as of December 2012, focusing on the financial aspects of hurricane seasons. Catastrophic losses due to Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina are addressed. U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster aid is assessed, along with dual sovereignty and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This study examines the impact of an abrupt catastrophic natural disaster on residential property vacancy and abandonment. Using the discrete-time hazard model with parcel-level land-use data in Miami-Dade County, Florida, from two years prior to and eight years after Hurricane Andrew (1991-2000), the analysis shows that Hurricane Andrew triggered widespread property vacancy and abandonment in its impact area, especially in neighborhoods already in decline. Occurrence of vacancy and abandonment is determined by damage intensity and the preevent neighborhood sociodemographic characteristics. The analysis also shows that vacant and abandoned properties exert a negative spillover eff ect that can induce a succession of vacancy and abandonment over time. This paper concludes with a discussion about planning implications regarding neighborhood transition and disaster recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the aftermath of the hurricane Andrew in Homestead, Florida on August 24, 1992. It mentions that the hurricane has demolished 154 families. It notes that the Everglades Community Association has hired Steven Kirk to reconstruct the home of the workers of the farmers for the winter's harvest.

Much debate within the weather, climate, disaster mitigation, and insurance communities centers on whether rising sea-surface temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean due to anthropogenic global warming are resulting in discernible trends in hurricane frequency or energy. However, some of the apparent increase in hurricane frequency may be due to the recent availability of aircraft- and satellite-based observations. A possible approach to this issue is via microseisms, seismic signals traditionally thought of as noise because they are not generated by earthquakes. These surface waves generated by ocean storms are detected even in continental interiors far from source regions. Here we show that the August 1992 Saffir/Simpson category 5 Hurricane Andrew can be detected using microseisms recorded at the Harvard, Massachusetts, seismic station even while the storm is as far as ~2000 km away and still at sea. When applied to decades of existing analog seismograms, this methodology could yield a seismically identified hurricane record for comparison to the pre-aircraft and pre-satellite observational record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The occurrence of a number of large-scale disasters or catastrophes in recent years, including the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004), the Kashmir earthquake (2005), Hurricane Katrina (2005) and Hurricane Ike (2008), have raised our awareness regarding the devastating effects of disasters on human populations and the importance of developing mitigation and preparedness strategies to limit the consequences of such events. However, there is still a dearth of social science research focusing on the socio-economic impact of disasters on businesses in the United States. This paper contributes to this research literature by focusing on the impact of disasters on business closure and relocation through the use of multivariate logistic regression models, specifically focusing on the Loma Prieta earthquake (1989) and Hurricane Andrew (1992). Using a multivariate model, we examine how physical damage to the infrastructure, lifeline disruption and business characteristics, among others, impact business closure and relocation following major disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates the spatial redistribution of socially vulnerable subpopulations during long-term recovery from natural disaster. We hypothesize that the local environmental impact of a disaster influences this redistribution process and that how it does so varies by the urban or rural context in which the disaster occurs. To test these hypotheses, we use a novel research design that combines the natural experiment offered by Hurricane Andrew with GIS technology and local census data. Findings indicate that in a more urbanized disaster zone (Miami), long-term recovery displaces socially disadvantaged residents from harder-hit areas; yet, in a more rural disaster zone (southwestern Louisiana), long-term recovery concentrates socially disadvantaged residents within these harder-hit areas. These findings bridge classic and contemporary research on postdisaster recovery and open new terrain for thinking about how environmental and social forces intersect to transform regions in different settlement contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Logistic regression and spatial analytic techniques are used to model fetal distress risk as a function of maternal exposure to Hurricane Andrew. First, monthly time series compare the proportion of infants born distressed in hurricane affected and unaffected areas. Second, resident births are analyzed in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, before, during, and after Hurricane Andrew. Third, resident births are analyzed in all Florida locales with 100,000 or more persons, comparing exposed and unexposed gravid females. Fourth, resident births are analyzed along Hurricane Andrew's path from southern Florida to northeast Mississippi. Results show that fetal distress risk increases significantly with maternal exposure to Hurricane Andrew in second and third trimesters, adjusting for known risk factors. Distress risk also correlates with the destructive path of Hurricane Andrew, with higher incidences of fetal distress found in areas of highest exposure intensity. Hurricane exposed African-American mothers were more likely to birth distressed infants. The policy implications of in utero costs of natural disaster exposure are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem: Housing recovery is key to revitalizing communities following major natural disasters, and yet there is little empirical research on how housing recovery differs across neighborhoods with different sociodemographic characteristics, what happens to housing markets, or property abandonment after disasters. Purpose: We address these gaps by examining single-family housing recovery, housing sales, and property abandonment following Hurricane Andrew in south Miami-Dade County, FL. Methods: We developed panel models predicting single-family housing recovery to examine the effects of home and neighborhood characteristics and hurricane damage on recovery. We analyzed home sales and properties abandoned to assess the extent and duration of the hurricane impacts and conducted correlation analyses to identify neighborhood attributes associated with post-disaster home sales and abandonment. Results and conclusions: Housing recovery trajectories depended on neighborhood demographic, socioeconomic, and housing characteristics. Rental units and homes in low-income and minority neighborhoods recovered more slowly. Home sales increased significantly, with some properties selling multiple times within a short period especially in heavily damaged nonminority neighborhoods. Property abandonments increased dramatically, potentially creating cascading negative effects in affected neighborhoods. Takeaway for practice: Major natural disasters are likely to be followed by housing market volatility, high rates of property abandonment, and uneven housing recovery. To prevent long-lasting adverse effects, planners should focus on reducing housing turnover, retaining home ownership, and promoting reuse of abandoned properties. State and local governments should consider imposing emergency moratoria on foreclosures and insurance cancelations and providing incentives to encourage the rebuilding of low income and rental properties. Land-bank programs could dampen housing market volatility, and emergency property disposition programs and eminent domain processes could expedite reuse of abandoned properties. However, redevelopment should be consistent with long-term development, equity, and hazard mitigation goals. Research support: This research was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation directly (CMS 0100155) and through the Mid-American Earthquake Center (EEC-9701785). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Mid-American Earthquake Center. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of widespread criticism for its poor performance in Hurricane Andrew in 1992, FEMA became a more effective organization under the leadership of James Witt (1993–2001). One answer to the question of how and why FEMA improved so rapidly and significantly during this period is Carpenter’s (2001) theory of “bureaucratic autonomy.” This paper defines the minimum conditions Carpenter considers necessary for the term, evaluates their applicability to FEMA during this period, and briefly examines alternative explanations for FEMA’s organizational transformation. It concludes that the innovation and entrepreneurship FEMA demonstrated during this period do indeed meet the criteria for “bureaucratic autonomy.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines taxable sales in the Los Angeles and Miami metropolitan areas to find evidence of the short- and long-run effects of the Rodney King riots and Hurricane Andrew on their respective economies. The comparison of these two events shows that the King riots had a long-term negative effect on Los Angeles' economy while Hurricane Andrew had a short-term positive effect on the Miami economy. The paper also applies the contrasting experiences of Los Angeles and Miami to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. In some ways, Katrina is a hybrid of these two events since it combines elements of both a natural disaster and a social disaster. The paper examines how Katrina is similar to each of the previous incidents and how these similarities might affect the recovery of New Orleans following the storm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Damages from hurricanes and various windstorm events represent a loss of several billions of dollars in the United States. A loss of $30 billion was attributed to Hurricane Andrew alone in Florida in 1993. In 2004 and 2005, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and other locations in the southeast United States and the Caribbean saw an unprecedented wave of major hurricanes causing great destruction and property damage. This paper discusses the topic of home design for high winds and hurricanes, and sums up a recently completed practical research on this subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ten years after Hurricane Andrew, researchers returned to a multiethnic working-class community of homeowners first studied one year after the storm to investigate long-term impact on the community and its residents. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, this case study documents the recovery struggles of modest-income families who had tenuously achieved the American dream of home ownership. While most of the impacted region has recovered, this work highlights deep-seated continuing impacts on many households, as well as changes in the social landscape of the community. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew caused extensive damage to the housing, schools, and community infrastructure of South Miami Heights, Fla., and the first set of interviews (one year after the storm) revealed extensive problems, unrepaired homes, and suffering families. Ten years later a second round of in-depth, face-to-face interviews was completed with 32 of the same households, as well as with 10 key community informants to explore the circumstances and recovery level of homes, households, and the community at large. This case study is one of the few truly long-term examinations of a community after a disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the forced secondary circulations (FSCs) associated with hurricane-like vortices have been previously examined, understanding is still limited to idealized, axisymmetric flows and forcing functions. In this study, the individual contributions of latent heating, frictional, and dry dynamical processes to the FSCs of a hurricane vortex are separated in order to examine how a hurricane can intensify against the destructive action of vertical shear and how a warm-cored eye forms. This is achieved by applying a potential vorticity (PV) inversion and quasi-balanced omega equations system to a cloud-resolving simulation of Hurricane Andrew (1992) during its mature stage with the finest grid size of 6 km. It is shown that the latent heating FSC, tilting outward with height, acts to oppose the shear-forced vertical tilt of the storm, and part of the upward mass fluxes near the top of the eyewall is detrained inward, causing the convergence aloft and subsidence warming in the hurricane eye. The friction FSC is similar to that of the Ekman pumping with its peak upward motion occurring near the top of the planetary boundary layer (PBL) in the eye. About 40% of the PBL convergence is related to surface friction and the rest to latent heating in the eyewall. In contrast, the dry dynamical forcing is determined by vertical shear and system-relative flow. When an axisymmetric balanced vortex is subjected to westerly shear, a deep countershear FSC appears across the inner-core region with the rising (sinking) motion downshear (upshear) and easterly sheared horizontal flows in the vertical. The shear FSC is shown to reduce the destructive roles of the large-scale shear imposed, as much as 40%, including its forced vertical tilt. Moreover, the shear FSC intensity is near-linearly proportional to the shear magnitude, and the wavenumber-1 vertical motion asymmetry can be considered as the integrated effects of the shear FSCs from all the tropospheric layers. The shear FSC can be attributed to the Laplacian of thermal advection and the temporal and spatial variations of centrifugal force in the quasi-balanced omega equation, and confirms the previous finding of the development of wavenumber-1 cloud asymmetries in hurricanes. Hurricane eye dynamics are presented by synthesizing the latent heating FSC with previous studies. The authors propose to separate the eye formation from maintenance processes. The upper-level inward mass detrainment forces the subsidence warming (and the formation of an eye), the surface pressure fall, and increased rotation in the eyewall. This increased rotation will induce an additional vertical pressure gradient force to balance the net buoyancy generated by the subsidence warming for the maintenance of the hurricane eye. In this sense, the negative vertical shear in tangential wind in the eyewall should be considered as being forced by the subsidence warming, and maintained by the rotation in the eyewall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accuracy of predicting storm surge inundation depends on the model grid resolution. The spatial resolutions of many storm surge models are on the order of hundreds of meters to kilometers, which are not sufficient to resolve irregular shorelines and small topographic features. In this paper, storm surge and inundation simulation for Hurricane Andrew of 1992 was carried out with the unstructured tidal, residual, intertidal mudflat (UnTRIM) hydrodynamic model. A high-resolution unstructured grid with cell sizes as small as 20 m was placed over the Key Biscayne Bay area near Miami to better represent irregular shorelines and small morphological features such as barrier islands, rivers, canals, and inlets. A series of experiments was conducted to test model performance with respect to model grid resolution, time step selection, open boundary condition specification, and tidal influence. Results show that the model simulated maximum surge heights and areas of inundation along the Biscayne Bay coast very well, indicating that the UnTRIM model is useful in simulating storm surge flooding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past hurricanes such as Andrew and the recent spate of hurricanes in Florida and elsewhere have shown the potential and extent of structural damage due to windborne debris during such storms. The loss of building exterior envelope and the subsequent structural damage to buildings due to such debris impact can be significant. Recent building codes have incorporated wind missile impact criteria for the roof and wall assemblies of coastal buildings. In this study, typical wall and roof assemblies for Florida residential and light commercial coastal construction were identified. In conjunction with a review of prior large wind missile testing results, assemblies that are yet to be tested were tabulated. These assemblies were tested for the Florida Building Code (FBC) large wind missile impact criteria. Based on the test results, a comprehensive list of wall and roof assemblies that passed the FBC test was developed. Also recommended were assemblies that should be avoided for the construction of residential and/or light commercial buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality assurance (QA) procedures have been automated to reduce the time and labor necessary to discover outliers in weather data. Measurements from neighboring stations are used in this study in a spatial regression test to provide preliminary estimates of the measured data points. The new method does not assign the largest weight to the nearest estimate but, instead, assigns the weights according to the standard error of estimate. In this paper, the spatial test was employed to study patterns in flagged data in the following extreme events: the 1993 Midwest floods, the 2002 drought, Hurricane Andrew (1992), and a series of cold fronts during October 1990. The location of flagged records and the influence zones for such events relative to QA were compared. The behavior of the spatial test in these events provides important information on the probability of making a type I error in the assignment of the quality control flag. Simple pattern recognition tools that identify zones wherein frequent flagging occurs are illustrated. These tools serve as a means of resetting QA flags to minimize the number of type I errors as demonstrated for the extreme events included here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined relations among stress, children's recall, and psychological functioning following Hurricane Andrew. Thirty-five children from mixed socioeconomic backgrounds were divided into low-, moderate-, and high-stress groups and were interviewed about the hurricane immediately after the storm and 6 years later. Our primary interest, stemming from previous work, was in the emotional and cognitive content of their recall. At the initial interviews, children who were more stressed included less positive emotion and fewer cognitive processing words and provided less free recall and less information overall. In contrast, children who initially recalled more information showed better psychological outcome immediately following the hurricane. Six years later, children who had been more stressed initially included more negative emotion and more cognitive processing words, but provided less information during free recall. Children who had initially used more positive emotion words and recalled more information showed better psychological outcome 6 years later. Implications for children's remembering and coping with traumatic events are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Woody debris is abundant in hurricane-impacted forests. With a major hurricane affecting South Florida mangroves approximately every 20 yr, carbon storage and nutrient retention may be influenced greatly by woody debris dynamics. In addition, woody debris can influence seedling regeneration in mangrove swamps by trapping propagules and enhancing seedling growth potential. Here, we report on line-intercept woody debris surveys conducted in mangrove wetlands of South Florida 9–10 yr after the passage of Hurricane Andrew. The total volume of woody debris for all sites combined was estimated at 67 m3/ha and varied from 13 to 181 m3/ha depending upon differences in forest height, proximity to the storm, and maximum estimated wind velocities. Large volumes of woody debris were found in the eyewall region of the hurricane, with a volume of 132 m3/ha and a projected woody debris biomass of approximately 36 t/ha. Approximately half of the woody debris biomass averaged across all sites was associated as small twigs and branches (fine woody debris), since coarse woody debris>7.5 cm felled during Hurricane Andrew was fairly well decomposed. Much of the small debris is likely to be associated with post-hurricane forest dynamics. Hurricanes are responsible for large amounts of damage to mangrove ecosystems, and components of associated downed wood may provide a relative index of disturbance for mangrove forests. Here, we suggest that a fine:coarse woody debris ratio≤0.5 is suggestive of a recent disturbance in mangrove wetlands, although additional research is needed to corroborate such findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hurricane Andrew of 1992 caused unprecedented economic devastation along its path through the Bahamas, southeastern Florida, and Louisiana. Damage in the United States was estimated to be $26 billion (in 1992 dollars), making Andrew one of the most expensive natural disasters in U.S. history. This hurricane struck southeastern Florida with maximum 1-min surface winds estimated in a 1992 poststorm analysis at 125 kt (64 m s-1). This original assessment was primarily based on an adjustment of aircraft reconnaissance flight-level winds to the surface. Based on recent advancements in the understanding of the eyewall wind structure of major hurricanes, the official intensity of Andrew was adjusted upward for five days during its track across the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico by the National Hurricane Center Best Track Change Committee. In particular, Andrew is now assessed by the National Hurricane Center to be a Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale category-5 hurricane (the highest intensity category possible) at its landfall in southeastern Florida, with maximum 1-min winds of 145 kt (75 m s-1). This makes Andrew only the third category-5 hurricane to strike the United States since at least 1900. Implications for how this change impacts society's planning for such extreme events are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children who experienced a highly stressful natural disaster, Hurricane Andrew, were interviewed within a few months of the event, when they were 3-4 years old, and again 6 years later, when they were 9-10 years old. Children were grouped into low, moderate, or high stress groups depending on the severity of the experienced storm. All children were able to recall this event in vivid detail 6 years later. In fact, children reported over twice as many propositions at the second interview as at the first. At the initial interview, children in the high stress group reported less information than children in the moderate stress group, but 6 years later, children in all three stress groups reported similar amounts of information. However children in the high stress group needed more questions and prompts than children in the other stress groups. Yet children in the high stress group also reported more consistent information between the two interviews, especially about the storm, than children in the other stress groups. Implications for children's developing memory of stressful events are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although considerable progress has been made in understanding the development of hurricanes, our knowledge of their three-dimensional structures of latent heat release and inner-core thermodynamics remains limited. In this study, the inner-core budgets of potential temperature (θ), moisture (q), and equivalent potential temperature (θe) are examined using a high-resolution (Δx = 6 km), nonhydrostatic, fully explicit simulation of Hurricane Andrew (1992) during its mature or intensifying stage. It is found that the heat energy is dominated by latent heat release in the eyewall, sublimative-evaporative cooling near the eye-eyewall interface, and the upward surface fluxes of sensible and latent heat from the underlying warm ocean. The latent heating (θ) rates in the eyewall range from less than 10°C h[SUP-1] to greater than 100°C h[SUP-1], depending upon whether latent heat is released in radial inflow or outflow regions. The latent heating rates decrease inward in the inflow regions and become negative near the eye-eyewall interface. It is shown that the radial θ advective cooling in the inflow regions accounts for the initiation and maintenance of the penetrative downdrafts at the eye-eyewall interface that are enhanced by the sublimative-evaporative cooling. It is also shown that the vertical θ advection overcompensates the horizontal θ advection for the generation of the warm-cored eye, and the sum of latent heating and radial advective warming for the development of intense cooling in the eyewall. The moisture budgets show the dominant upward transport of moisture in the eyewall updrafts (and spiral rainbands), partly by the low-level outflow jet from the bottom eye regions, so that the eyewall remains nearly saturated. The θe budgets reveal that θe could be considered as an approximately conserved variable in the eyewall above the boundary layer even in the presence of... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narrates how Hurricane Andrew struck Florida on August 24, 1992. Response of the residents of the area to the hurricane; Description and cost of the damages; Recovery from the impact of the natural disaster; Lessons learned from the event. INSET: A Voice in the Dark.

This paper examines long-term recovery outcomes of businesses impacted by major natural disasters. Data were collected via two large-scale mail surveys—one administered to Santa Cruz County, California businesses 8 years after the Loma Prieta earthquake and the other administered to businesses in South Dade County, Florida, 6 years after Hurricane Andrew. Based on the results of OLS regression models, we argue that long-term recovery experiences of businesses are affected by various factors, including the economic sector in which a business operates, its age and financial condition, and the scope of its primary market; direct and indirect disaster impacts, including physical damage, forced closure, and disruption of operations; and owner perceptions of the broader economic climate. Previous disaster experience, level of disaster preparedness, and use of external sources of aid were not found to significantly affect the long-term economic viability of businesses in the two study communities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses the valuation of disaster mitigation in a Gulf Coast, Florida. Estimation damage of Hurricane Andrew; Definition on self-insurance type of mitigation; Examination on market price for buyers to mitigation on existing homes.

Examines the nonlinear relationship between an observed dynamic pressure time series at a fixed point below the surface and the surface wave elevation with applications to Hurricane Andrew. Wave-wave interaction theory; Mathematical formalism of the nonlinear wave theory; Surface elevation of a transient irregular wave train.