‘92 Hurricanes, Led by Andrew, Prove Costliest in U.S. History

MIAMI —  Hurricane Andrew’s late-August sweep across South Florida and Louisiana made the 1992 Atlantic hurricane season, which officially ends Monday, the costliest in U.S. history.

The 1992 season will be remembered as the year of Andrew, the third-strongest hurricane ever to strike the United States. Andrew caused up to $30 billion in damage when it scoured the southern tip of Florida on Aug. 24, before barreling across the Gulf of Mexico into Louisiana.

With Hurricane Iniki’s crippling foray into the Hawaiian Islands and Typhoon Omar’s destructive surge over the South Pacific island of Guam, a U.S. territory, 1992 was a nightmare for emergency management officials. South Florida, Guam and the island of Kauai all were declared disaster areas.

Billions of federal tax dollars have been paid out to rebuild public facilities and to help property owners who were not covered by insurance.

“I hope we are never going to see anything like it again,” said Lixion Avila, a specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Fla., of the latest hurricane season.

Hurricane forecasters say the 1992 Atlantic season actually was “below average” for hurricane activity with only six “named” storms, four of them hurricanes. In the average hurricane season, 10 storms are named and six reach hurricane strength.

A storm system is given a name when its sustained winds reach tropical storm strength of 39 m.p.h. and it is accorded hurricane status when winds hit 75 m.p.h.

Hurricane Andrew ranks as the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, far ahead of Hurricane Hugo, which caused $7.1 billion in damage in the Carolinas in 1989, according to National Hurricane Center figures. Hurricanes Betsy (1965) and Agnes (1972) each caused an estimated $6.4 billion in damage.

Despite the catastrophic damage tolls, hurricane center officials said the 1992 Atlantic hurricane season took relatively few lives. Andrew killed 56 people and Tropical Storm Danielle was blamed for one death on the East Coast.

It could have been far worse, said forecaster Avila, if it had not been for advanced technology and modern communications.

Even as the hurricane season draws to a close, thousands of South Floridians are still engaged in a struggle to return their lives to normal. Some 2,000 people are living in the streets and thousands more are crowded into apartments and relatives’ homes while their own houses are being rebuilt.