After Andrew, Florida Changed Its Approach to Hurricanes<br />“Andrew kicked our butts and we learned from it — basically in South Florida, people were running around like crazy, mostly in<br />circles,” said Richard Olson, the director of the international hurricane research center at Florida International University.<br />“How much of the county have they paved over there?” said Craig Fugate, who served as the administrator of<br />the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the Obama administration and was Florida’s emergency manager.<br />MIAMI — Survivors of Hurricane Andrew — a Category 5 storm<br />that decimated cities south of Miami — talk of pre-Andrew and post-Andrew as a kind of biblical milestone.<br />“Whether it will make much of a difference with Irma,” he said, “will all depend on what the nature of the event is, and where it is.”<br />Florida, like Houston, is susceptible to excessive rainfall.<br />Rick Scott did not mince words: “This is a devastating hurricane,” adding that “the storm is bigger, stronger, faster than Hurricane Andrew.”<br />Andrew, which blew in 25 years ago, was the last Category 5 storm to hit the United States,<br />and it clobbered south Miami-Dade County, flattening houses and buildings.<br />“Andrew kick-started the professionalization of emergency management in Florida and, really, elsewhere,” Mr. Olson said.
