HURRICANE ANDREW: THE POPULATION FACTOR

Robert W. Fox
September 1, 1992
Forum Papers
Forum Paper
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HURRICANE ANDREW: THE POPULATION FACTOR
An NPG Forum Paper
(NPG Footnote)
by Robert W. Fox
September 1992

The scale of destruction caused by Hurricane Andrew in south Florida is shocking. Numbing pictures appeared on television showing flattened homes and businesses and boats piled on top of one another. A million people lost their electricity. Roughly 250,000 still-dazed people in south Dade county have no place to live and no place to go, little food or water or other basics.

But this is just the latest of the hurricanes that regularly sweep across the peninsula. The entire state is vulnerable, with no portion more than 75 miles from the open sea. All counties in Florida are designated as “coastal counties” by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). A major hurricane has been fully expected and long overdue.

The last big one, also of near “Category 5” status, to hit this region was in 1947. It was said to have wiped out “hundreds” of buildings—not Andrew’s 60,000— and to have damaged the citrus crop, but that damage was not evident in the total U.S. citrus output that year.

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