Health, Hunger Key Concerns in Miami Cleanup

Rescue teams with trained dogs searched Hurricane Andrew’s wreckage for bodies and survivors south of Miami on Tuesday as the last of the thousands of Floridians injured in Monday’s disaster straggled into hospital emergency rooms.

Late in the day, the death toll stood at 17, including three in the Bahamas, and estimates of the economic toll soared as high as $20 billion, triple the damage of Hurricane Hugo’s assault on the Carolinas four years ago.

Despite a massive effort backed by local, state and federal governments and an army of volunteers, Tuesday brought full realization that South Florida’s recovery from the devastating winds, which gusted as high as 164 m.p.h., will be protracted and excruciating.

“Dade County as we know it is irrevocably changed. It is never going to be like it was Sunday morning,” said Kate Hale, head of emergency management services for the county.

But as remarkable as the sheer magnitude of the devastation was the fact that many more victims did not die in flattened communities where they rode out the storm’s pre-dawn strike. “It’s terrible. But we’re alive and that’s all that counts,” said one woman, brushing away tears.

Some, including a woman who could say nothing but “no casa, no casa,” emerged more than 24 hours after Andrew’s passage and reported to seven hospitals accepting only emergency cases. Officials still had no count of those injured before and after the storm, saying only that casualties number in the thousands. Fears persisted that the search of wrecked neighborhoods of small wooden houses will discover more dead.

“Some bodies are caught in the wreckage and they have had to be left for the time being,” said Jay Eaker, a Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman in Tallahassee.

For both volunteers and official agencies, the foremost challenge was to avert hunger and potential threats to public health in the worst hit areas. With Andrew bearing down on the coast of Louisiana, officials told southeast Florida’s 50,000 who are homeless because of the storm to remain in shelters and announced that a dawn-to-dusk curfew would be imposed for at least one more night.

By keeping as much traffic off the streets as possible, municipalities can move faster to remove massive debris and to get traffic lights back in working order.

Nevertheless, there were traffic jams on both the Florida Free Way and the Dixie Highway running from Miami through the stricken neighborhoods in southern Dade County.

In spite of help from 2,200 Florida National Guardsmen and police officers from other cities as far away as Charleston, S. C., there were continued outbreaks of looting. About 85 people were arrested on looting and curfew violation charges Monday night and arrests on burglary charges were still being made on Tuesday, reaching 200 by the time the curfew was reimposed.

At water and ice distribution points, customers stood in line for hours as the temperature reached into the 90s.

The few gasoline stations that managed to open quickly attracted long lines of customers, as did banks, sandwich shops, animal hospitals and pay telephones. But the overall scene on the day after one of history’s most devastating hurricanes was not one of futility.

From across Florida and from adjoining states, an army of volunteers and technicians continued streaming in--nurses rushed in by helicopter; tree surgeons on convoys of trucks equipped with augers, buckets, lifts and saws; electrical repair crews to help Florida Power & Light Co.

Gov. Lawton Chiles, who arrived hours after the tragedy and remained in the area Tuesday, renewed his promise that the state government will help see the recovery through.

“I can tell you that you won’t be left to pick up the pieces by yourself,” he told a Miami news conference. “I know it is a lonely time but the people of Florida are ready to stand by your side. . . .” Chiles said that more volunteer medical help is urgently needed, not only to staff hospitals, but medical centers to be established as shelters in the coming days. While hospitals worked to treat the continued arrival of residents with cuts, bruises and broken bones, nursing homes battered out of business by Andrew shuffled their patients into similar facilities that still operated.

On Tuesday afternoon, the causeway leading to the posh Key Biscayne community, which took the brunt of the storm, was reopened. Although reporters and residents had been barred from the area, camera-equipped helicopters had shown that expensive seaside residences suffered extensive damage and that high-rise condominiums had lost most of their windows when Andrew hit with sustained winds of 138 m.p.h.

Residents who made their way back Tuesday afternoon found that water more than a foot deep had surged into their living rooms and that ocean fish had been flung across their lawns and street.

In spite of efforts to discourage unnecessary driving for one more day, there were huge traffic tie-ups, notably on the approach to the Florida Keys as residents, evacuated on Saturday, streamed homeward. On some fronts, there were distinct signs of progress in getting Dade and Broward counties functioning again.

Officials said that Broward County, to the north of Miami and far less damaged than the area to the south, would see electricity restored by Thursday.

That will allow crews to concentrate on South Dade County, where some residents are expected to be without power for weeks.

Several thousand customers remained without electricity in Palm Beach County as well as in the Naples area on Florida’s west coast.

Ft. Lauderdale’s airport returned to near normal operation on Tuesday morning and in the afternoon Miami International Airport began accepting customers with confirmed flight reservations, preparing for resumption of passenger flights.

But bus and mail service remained at a halt. Courts and public schools will remain closed until at least next week.

Most Floridians appeared to accept their plight with resignation, many of them with gratitude that they are alive.

Many took in neighbors whose houses had been lost. There were street “block parties” where residents who had scarcely known each other joined in cutting up fallen trees.

Those living in comfortable neighborhoods seldom raised a murmur when their yards became temporary streets to carry traffic around fallen trees.

There were, however, instances of overt callousness. At an ice station where the wait was as long as seven hours in stifling heat, one man tried to sell five bags of ice that he had just purchased for $1 per bag for $50 each. In North Miami Beach, some residents had to be ordered to turn off lawn sprinklers and in one neighborhood cars were being casually washed.

At the Miami Zoo, volunteers pitched in to fight their way through fallen trees so that stranded animals could be fed.

Like residents who had homes destroyed around them, the animals appeared to be in shock. A net that once kept rare birds within the zoo’s aviary was blown away but the birds remained, as did hoofed animals that could have walked away.

Although zoo animals declined to flee, state officials confirmed that a number of monkeys infected with the HIV virus had escaped from a damage research facility in Miami.