Florida Rebuilding Rules Stir Up Storm of Anger : Recovery: Some workers complain that regulations interfere with reconstruction. Others say officials aren’t doing enough to prevent rip-offs.

Roofer Tom Trainer was waiting in line to get a contractor’s license so he could help rebuild hurricane-ravaged southern Florida when he was told to forget it--a new law had gone into effect that morning excluding him because he was from another county.

After Pedro Acebo put new roofs on two storm-thrashed houses, a Dade County building inspector said he would not get his $6,800 fee. The reason: The county had just changed the building code in the wake of the nation’s costliest natural disaster, and shingle staples were now outlawed.

“It’s not right,” Acebo said. “I’m willing to follow code, whatever it is, but I can’t if they keep changing it without telling anyone.”

The two roofers are not the only ones complaining as Dade County staggers toward recovery from Hurricane Andrew. Many others have tales of woe that they say underscore a new calamity in this devastated swath of southern Florida where more than 200,000 people were left homeless by the Aug. 24 storm.

It is, they say, a crisis over reconstruction--how to nurture, govern and regulate what is being called the largest domestic rebuilding effort ever: raising 300 square miles of flattened infrastructure from the ground up.

Myriad government agencies and private committees are looking into solutions for the future, and they are trying to prevent a repeat of past problems, particularly shoddy workmanship, poor design and lax oversight of the building industry.

The county is immune to lawsuits, but homeowners have sued several major builders in subdivisions where Andrew blew off roofs and crumpled homes.

So far, the solutions have led to their own problems.

Developers, contractors, laborers, homeowners--and even government officials themselves--say they are having to deal with a morass of confusing, controversial and unfair policies.

Some say there is too much government intervention in the rebuilding effort, others complain there is not enough. Nearly everyone complains about delays, communication breakdowns and bureaucratic snafus.

“It is an absolute nightmare, bigger than one anyone has ever known,” said Tom Utterback of the Dade County Board of Rules and Appeals, which administers building codes. “It will be a monumental effort just to get some semblance of control.”

There are many vexing dilemmas. Among them: How can officials regulate, without over-regulating, the thousands of workers who have arrived to get in on what Utterback calls the new Gold Rush? And how can a financially strapped county already hard-pressed to police its builders possibly ensure quality control in all the new and rebuilt structures?

More than 137,000 homes were heavily damaged by the storm, 30,000 of them destroyed. Dozens of schools, libraries, strip malls and other structures--not to mention Homestead Air Force Base--were leveled.

The commercial corridor along Dixie Highway looks as if it were bombed out. So do tiny Homestead and Florida City.

“It’s mind-boggling,” Dade County building inspector Gary Perkins said as he drove through the hard-hit Perrine area recently. “Everywhere you look is destruction. You’re constantly amazed.”

Darleen Finklea, 40, was outside what was left of her house at 16300 S.W. 100th Court when Perkins arrived. He nailed a “UR” sign--uninhabitable but repairable--to the door.

Finklea couldn’t believe it; the house was nothing but a roofless frame with someone’s Toyota still crashed into the front. Her insurance company had not come yet, and she could not line up contractors--or a demolition team--until she knew how much money to expect.

“We’re waiting for help,” she said. “From who, we don’t know.”

The radio crackles with insurance company ads telling homeowners to be patient. But the state’s patience expires this week: Overwhelmed insurance companies must finish processing storm-related claims by Oct. 15.

Government also has been taxed to the limit.

All available county inspectors--overworked before the storm--work six days a week, combing through storm-damaged neighborhoods. Perkins is a plumbing inspector. During sweeps, he spends a few minutes at each house to decide its fate. Others are trained only in elevator inspection, but they’re out there too.

Terry Lunn, formerly customer service manager, is now unsafe structures coordinator for the county Building and Zoning Department. He says that many more inspectors are needed, even before all the repair and rebuilding work comes up for approval.

The county has allowed homeowners to hire private inspectors to review repair work--despite repeated grand jury warnings that self-regulation by builders will never work.

Dade County and Homestead city officials also have incrementally strengthened building codes and now require stronger building materials. Homestead last week slapped a six-month moratorium on mobile home permits; thousands of such homes were tossed about like toys in Andrew’s 175-m.p.h. winds.

And Trainer and other contractors from outside Dade County now must pass a qualifying test for their license, which is only good for six months and prohibits work on structural repairs.

About 500 contractors, including many from out of state, got licenses before the change. Some of them were in line with Trainer, who is licensed in neighboring Broward County. “One time they say yes, and the next they say no,” he said. “How do you run a government that way?”

Trainer finally took the $365 test --and failed. “So I still can’t work,” he said, fuming. “Meanwhile, all the unlicensed contractors are going hog-wild.”

Dade County officials say restrictions are needed to maintain some order and control in a construction market gone haywire.

And for good reason: Contractors and laborers from around the nation have pitched tents wherever possible before scrambling off to find work. “This is the land of opportunity, and I’m planning on staying for years,” said Rick Mahon of Wichita Falls, Tex., as friends at a labor encampment nod in agreement. “All of us are.”

Some big in-state firms, like National Construction & Restoration Inc., are doing dozens of projects, using laborers paid $7 an hour or less to do backbreaking work in the blistering sun.

These are boom times, and there are jobs for every inexperienced laborer who wants them, and plenty of room for advancement.

“After one day, I became a foreman,” said Keith Sutton, 32, of National Construction. “People are gonna retire on what they make here in two years.”

Acebo, the roofer, says many contractors charge three times his $400 fee to patch roof holes.

County officials cringe at such attitudes, which they say are as prevalent as the many scams and swindles that are occurring.

Trainer says the county should force outsiders to work through the auspices of local firms--like South Carolina did after Hurricane Hugo in 1989--so that homeowners have a recourse when problems arise.

More drastic measures may be needed to protect vulnerable homeowners from rogue repair workers, Utterback said. “They’re not following standards and rules and codes, and there’s no inspection because we don’t know it’s going on unless they pull a permit. It’s impossible to stop them.”

Howard Luck, director of the Homestead Building Department, said it will take years for his five inspectors to inspect the city’s 12,000 damaged or destroyed structures. Dade County officials say they’ll have the same problem.

Those involved in the rebuilding say they have no blueprint to go by and that they will have to figure things out as they go along.

“It’s really impossible to be sure the reconstruction is going to be done the way it should,” Utterback said. “I hate to say it, but that’s the way it is.”