Survival for Victims of Hurricane Andrew Doesn’t Go by the Book : Storm: Many residents ignore orders to leave their damaged homes. Rules aren’t being enforced because of the severe disruption.

Janet Cubberson, a mother of five, nodded gravely when a county building inspector pasted a note on the door of her ranch-style suburban house that designated it as uninhabitable. The roof leaked and electrical wiring was wet. She would have to pack up and move.

Cubberson had other ideas. “I’m not going anywhere. My stuff is here, my kids’ school is nearby. So what if the roof leaks? I’m better off here than in tent city,” she said this week after the inspector had driven off.

Should Cubberson worry about being forcibly evicted by the authorities? Evidently not.

“You understand,” said Martha Pantin, a spokeswoman for the Dade County Building and Zoning Department, “we have to be flexible. We are trying to help. The signs are put up to warn the residents. If they stay, it is at their risk. We don’t want to kick anyone out of their home.”

In the confused aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, the most damaging storm in Florida’s history, rules, if not meant to be broken, are certainly being bent. People in a tattered swath south of Miami have had their lives so thoroughly disrupted that local government has been reluctant to enforce normal procedures in dealing with damage and reconstruction. There is a sense that muddling through is the best policy.

The case of condemned housing is a prime example. County authorities are posting signs on battered houses to designate them as uninhabitable. Of 24,000 houses inspected so far, 10,000 were condemned and supposed to be vacated until repairs are made. Some residents are staying on anyway, in many cases because they have no place to go and refuse to enter the muddy tent cities that were established as temporary refuges after Andrew hit more than three weeks ago.

“We have no way of knowing how many people are living in uninhabitable housing,” said county spokeswoman Pantin. “We don’t want to know.”

The local electric company is not supposed to restore power to condemned buildings, but will provide an alternative to residents who want to stay at their houses. Florida Power and Light Co. will link up a temporary service with outlets attached to a post outdoors. “We understand the need for a stopgap measure,” said company spokesman Ray Golden.

In the impoverished town of Goulds, county officials declared the Dixie Trailer Park dangerous and told the 50 residents who were living among the ruins to leave. No one did, even though several families are doubling up inside trailers that look like half shells, with the inner rooms exposed to the air, to mosquitoes and to the stench of overflowing portable toilets.

“I don’t want to go to the tents and I don’t have money to go anywhere else,” said Ofelia Mondragon, a migrant farm worker from Mexico.

Mondragon is living in a half-destroyed trailer with her husband and infant son, who was born just before Andrew’s arrival. The residents are waiting for inspectors from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to declare them homeless and provide rent money. All refuse to leave until FEMA arrives; inspectors for the much-criticized agency are more than a week overdue, state health officials said.

Even when the FEMA checks arrive, Mondragon will probably find it difficult to find rental housing. Apartment vacancy rates in Dade County, which includes Miami, and Broward County to the north have fallen from about 3% to 5% to below 1% since Andrew hit. For large, relatively well-off families like the Cubbersons, suitable housing will also be a problem; single-family home rentals are virtually nonexistent.

The soft touch of emergency officials is making tent encampments an unattractive option. The camps, set up in hard-hit Homestead and Florida City, have been made less attractive even to poor families because of a reputation for hooliganism among illegal squatters, mostly out-of-town contractors who have come to hire out themselves for repair work. Almost no hotels are vacant in the area.

The genuine homeless complained of drunkenness and obscenity. Local officials have been reluctant to evict illegal squatters despite pledges to do so. Police gave the unwanted guests until Sunday to leave, but few did.

Control of suspected price gouging also is subject to waffling. Exploitation has been a constant concern of hurricane victims since an initial spurt of overcharging for basic items such as ice and water in the first hours after Andrew mowed through South Florida. The focus has now shifted to the costs of repairs, for fear that the tight market for both supplies and labor might lead to exorbitant prices. A clear policy, however, seems beyond the reach of agencies.

Last week, state insurance regulators set a list of costs for material and repairs that was meant to be a ceiling. Contractors complained that the list was unrealistic and prices cited were lower than those being paid before the hurricane. The state backed off and said its list was only a comparison guide to make sure that costs “were in the ballpark.”

In other hurricane-related developments:

--A special domestic court opened Thursday in Cutler Ridge and a safe house for battered women opened in Homestead to deal with a wave of violent abuse cases in the wake of the storm.

--The National Hurricane Center, in its first official report on the disaster, said Hurricane Andrew was the third-most intense storm to hit land in the United States this century. Director Bob Sheets described Andrew as being “like a 25-to-30-mile-wide tornado.”

--Florida Insurance Commissioner Tom Gallagher said insurance companies have until Oct. 15 to visit every Florida home and vehicle damaged by the hurricane. He set the deadline to ease the anxieties of policyholders in limbo.