One of my friends, kt Frankovich, was in Hurricane Andrew.
Her account of it is one of the most riveting stories you will ever read.
I tried to find one or two snippets from her work that would grab your interest... After being "glued" to her writing for about an hour, I realized that if I didn't choose something... anything... and post it, I would be reading all night and never get this message to you!!
kt survived hurricane Andrew. kt was a television producer with friends in the business. After she walked out of the dead zone, she contacted them and told them what really had happened... which was a FAR cry from what had been reported by the media. They would not run her story.
You can't even imagine what her story is like. I can't tell her story for you... no one can tell it like kt can tell it. You really HAVE to click through to her webpage and read ALL of it to fully understand what Andrew did... and probably what Charley has done.
I have clipped and pasted a small section from her book. This section follows her account of hearing the announcement on television that Andrew had changed course and was headed directly at her area. Within minutes, Andrew hit. Only God kept her and her son alive.
Here is a snippet that begins after Andrew hit, destroyed her apartment building, devastated the surroundings, severely injured her, and turned the survivors into walking zombies:
Within hours of the sun making its appearance, the stench of putrid death began to saturate the hot air. Remains of dead bodies and body parts lay scattered all about. I stepped on something oddly strange that caused me to stop. When I looked down, I thought the small hand belonged to a doll. But as I stood there staring at it, I realized I was wrong. The small severed hand was human.
The horror there to haunt me for the rest of my life...
Twelve other survivors wandered into our area that day. A few had survived from the complex like us but the others straggled in from elsewhere. Each one suffered from shell shock, too traumatized to speak. We hugged each other repeatedly, not wanting to let go. The touch of another human being seemed to be our lifeline. Unselfishly we shared in tears that wept over and over again. Clinging to each other as we waited for help to arrive. We'd speak a few words, then suddenly stop, suspending them without finishing the sentence. We couldn't communicate coherently. Some, like myself, were in dire need of emergency medical treatment. But there was no way to escape the endless aftermath. Andrew had gobbled up our cars and spat them out junked. My son's Astro Van rolled about the parking lot with a full size tree speared through the interior. Massive gnarled roots jutted out the rear door. Roads had disappeared out of sight. Telephones were a thing of the past. Without water or bandages, there wasn't much we could do, other than sit there and wait in the suffocating heat.
So, we waited and waited. Each hour passing by wretchedly slow, while it took ten long days for President Bush to summon the Federal Troops to South Dade with life sustaining supplies. Unknown to us, twenty-one communities in South Dade had been completely devastated. Roped off from the outside world by Metro Dade Police and military soldiers armed with semi-automatic rifles, we had no idea what was happening beyond our immediate area. Like little children, we truly believed emergency help would quickly arrive. Airlifting out the injured and bringing necessary supplies. The agonizing minutes dragged into hours, and hours dragged into days. No rescue teams showed up. Slowly we had to accept the ghastly truth. No one was coming to rescue us.
It was the worst, gut-wrenching betrayal I have ever experienced. Where were the emergency rescue teams? Where was our government? Where were our families? Where were our friends? Why didn't anyone come? We had no water, no food, no medical supplies, or shelter. When the hot muggy skies clouded with afternoon thunderstorms, we huddled together under any make-shift shelter we could find. Lightning bolts blasted our shell shocked minds, while our bodies shook with each approaching squall.
The stench of death tormented us with each passing hour. Reeking the humidity with foul rotting flesh. It saturated our nostrils deep into our throat, causing us to gag with each breath that we took. Just within our immediate vicinity, the area within walking distance, over seventy dead bodies were discovered. I watched a military personnel truck make its way slowly past me, carefully steering around felled trees and smashed roof tops, as it rolled out of the trailer park area on the morning Andrew ended. Uniformed soldiers stared at me blankly from the rear of the vehicle, where filled body- bags lay stacked on top of each other.
Soon thereafter, thick torrential black smoky clouds rolled across the grove headed in our direction. The stench of burning flesh mixed with lime descended so rapidly we didn't have time to react. The rolling smoke blanketed us and choked us with coughing fits. Continuously blowing our way for days on end. Metrozoo was burning dead bodies around the clock, at the back of their property. Five days into the aftermath the fires still raged on, while we gagged on thick dark mucous being coughed up from our lungs.
Insurmountable problems escalated with each passing hour. We had no sanitation facilities. What little water we managed to find was contaminated. We competed against rhesus monkeys and big apes searching for salvageable food. Asbestos dust blanketed everything. Rusty nails poked us. Slivers of broken glass pierced our every touch. And then, there were the nights ...when we moved about in total blackness constantly attacked by swarms of mosquitoes. Cock roaches and scorpions took over. Rats ran rampant. Snakes slid out of nowhere. As the unbearable temperatures climbed higher and hotter, colonies of maggots nested in rotting food and animal corpses. And, it wasn't long before armed looters began to infiltrate.
Please click through and read the rest of her story so you can understand that the government lied to us about Andrew. To this day, kt's account is one of the only true accounts of the real horror and death toll that Andrew brought.
The reason I am posting this is because you need to know that Charley is probably another Andrew. And we will probably be lied to again.
However, this time, we have the internet, and we have internet reporters who survived Charley. I think it's going to be harder for the government to keep the magnitude of Charley as hidden as they did the devastation of Andrew.
Read the rest of this story at:
http://www.whereheavensmeet.com/andrew/ch24txt.html
Please take a look at the rest of kt's webpage. kt is one of the most fascinating people you will ever find!!
http://www.whereheavensmeet.com/#
