South Florida Slowly Showing Signs of Recovery : Hurricane Andrew: The tent cities and most of the troops are gone. But many still live in tattered ruins unsure what to do.

Two months after Hurricane Andrew twisted this city and much of the surrounding area into the ruins of what is called the worst natural disaster ever to strike the United States, the patient is on the mend.

Electrical power has been almost completely restored, about 30% of businesses are open and, with the tents and field kitchens gone, the park across from City Hall could soon see a baseball game again.

City Manager Alex Muxo said: “The demand for housing is so great that property values have even gone up by 5% to 7%.”

Still, Muxo is the first to admit that in Homestead, as in much of southern Dade County, the nightmare lingers. In bombed-out neighborhoods, in former trailer parks now bulldozed clear of rubble and in schools still sharing space with Red Cross clinics and food distribution centers, life is far from what it was before Aug. 24 and two hours of 175-m.p.h. winds.

A 10 p.m. curfew remains in effect and, without street lights, vast areas that once bustled with life have taken on an eerie, haunted look that will last well beyond Halloween.

In Homestead, 85% of the homes were either destroyed or severely damaged, and two out of every three residents are gone, many for good. The current population is estimated to be 9,000, down from 27,000.

“Obviously, it’s never going to look like it did before,” Muxo said. “Remember, we had no water, no electricity and no food--the essentials. It was frustrating, disheartening, but it was reality: We became a Third World country overnight.

“Now at least people aren’t hungry; there’s plenty of help out there.”

Nonetheless, there is often an air of uncertainty that seems to drift through the minds of hurricane survivors like so much smoke from one of the many open debris incineration pits. Even longtime civic boosters feel it.

“There is some lack of confidence, and it ranges into despair,” said Ray Goode, president of We Will Rebuild, a coalition of community powerbrokers that has raised $20 million to spur reconstruction and help strained social service agencies. “We have a job creating optimism.”

The magnitude of the hurricane’s destruction almost defies measurement. Last week, insurance companies bumped their estimate of damage claims to a world record $10.2 billion, up 40% from earlier figures. Throughout the county, 175,000 people were left homeless. Lost jobs totaled 90,000.

According to county planners, the area faces a painstaking, two-tiered recovery, with south Dade an economic basket case. Overall, employment is expected to rebound in three years. But the number of jobs won’t climb to pre-storm levels until well into the 21st Century.

Major employers such as Burger King and American Bankers Insurance Group suffered heavy storm damage to their corporate headquarters, and operations have been temporarily moved elsewhere.

With its 160 stores, the Cutler Ridge Mall was the commercial center of south Dade County. It remains closed, and while the Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. has promised to reopen, shopping before this Christmas seems unlikely.

Other losses cannot be quantified. “We’re seeing a lot of delayed stress reactions now,” said psychologist Darrell Downs, clinical director of south Dade’s Community Mental Health Center, which deals with up to 45 crisis cases a day. “People are finally letting go of the survival mode they were in and falling into depression. To many, it just seems like it will never end.”

All but a handful of the more than 24,000 U.S. troops have pulled out of the area, most traffic signals are operating and, with grocery stores open, people are no longer standing forlornly in long, shadeless queues for boxes of canned goods. The temperature has dropped, and even the mosquitoes have abated.

But it is not necessary to travel far from the now-cleared streets of downtown Homestead to find storm survivors living in conditions that resemble horrific scenes from post-nuclear holocaust movies.

For example, scattered through the community called Naranja Lakes--a once-pleasant subdivision that used to be home to 4,000 people--perhaps 100 survivors are holed up in the remains of a trash-strewn ghost town. Three of the 17 deaths attributed directly to the storm happened here.

“This is like being on a camping trip with a tent that leaks,” said Ira Shear, 79, who with his wife, Shirley, is the sole occupant of Court 68, a block of 10 units. The the wind whistles through the exposed rafters, plaster drips from the ceiling with the rain and eight cats step lightly over the broken glass as they come and go through the shattered front window.

“We stay because there is no place to rent within 20 miles, and we couldn’t afford it anyway,” he said.

Half a mile away, Troy Curry, 19, his girlfriend, Missy Tkaczuk, 15, and six other young people live in a state of “Blade Runner” future shock amid the debris of Court 56. There is no electricity, and the walls are crumbling.

Danny Guennel and his girlfriend, Rachel Miller, both 16, sleep on a mattress set up on blocks to keep it out of the water flowing across the floor. Miller is seven months pregnant.

“I’m just waiting for a check from FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and then we’re out of here to New York,” Curry said. “This is really depressing.”

On Friday, the members of the Naranja Lakes homeowners association voted not to rebuild their community, but to divvy up the $48-million insurance settlement instead. Many former residents have already resettled elsewhere.

“All our friends are gone, and my wife can’t stand to even come back here,” said Norman Kisseloff, 70, who like several other Naranja Lakes residents has found a rental in Tamarac, northwest of Ft. Lauderdale in neighboring Broward County. “This place is a wasteland.”

Not all developments were so thoroughly devastated. The sound of hammering rings out from acres of single-family housing in Kendall and Perrine as blue sheets of plastic that held out the rain are being replaced by tar paper and shingles.

The tent cities have closed, and the last of about 3,000 homeless residents moved into trailers, which have sprung up around the wind-stripped landscape like clusters of silver-crowned mushrooms.

But the departure of the federal troops has raised the anxiety level for many residents still shaken by the overnight upheaval wrought by the storm.

“People feel they are continually being victimized, first by storm, then by robbers or rain or a lack of security,” said Downs, the psychologist. “There is a lot of anger at what seems like a loss of support.”

In fact, there is still free food and temporary shelter available, as well as millions in emergency money from FEMA and other federal, state and county agencies. We Will Rebuild has launched a program to jump-start reconstruction and renovation in neighborhoods where 100 or more homeowners promise to stick it out.

In Homestead, Habitat for Humanity--the volunteer home-building group whose 27 Miami-area houses all withstood the hurricane’s winds with only minimal damage--has announced plans for a 200-home village. Work on the first six houses is under way.

“Although we hear of isolated cases of those who would rather collect the insurance, raze the house, sell the lot and relocate, there is overwhelming interest on the part of residents to rebuild,” said Goode of We Will Rebuild. “But not everyone has seen an adjuster, people don’t know what their settlement is going to be, so they’re in a no-man’s-land, waiting. There is a high level of frustration.”

Frustration breeds uncertainty, Goode said, and that has contributed to an exodus from the hardest-hit areas. By one estimate, as many as 10,000 people from south Dade have moved to Broward County.

Muxo envisions the day a year from now when Homestead will be “a model city for the future, with parks open, roads re-landscaped and at least 65% to 70% of the homes and condos rebuilt.”

Moreover, he added, Homestead will soon be the site of a new all-suite hotel, the Miami Grand Prix auto race has relocated here and--after a year’s delay--the Cleveland Indians will show up for spring training at the city’s new baseball complex in 1994.

In Naranja Lakes, the few remaining residents hold out like resistance fighters in a war-torn countryside. Ira and Shirley Shear expect an insurance check for $25,000 with which they can pay off their mortgage and buy a houseboat to live in the Upper Keys. Curry, Tkaczuk and their friends are also waiting--for money, for the right job, for the next beer run.

“We’re on hold,” said Shirley Shear. “I’m just hanging on till I start to live again.”