The rest of us, blessed by capricious luck, finally have time to reflect. Thousands and thousands of families are homeless and heartbroken this morning. We haven't been able to employ them all, protect them from crime, properly educate their children or even guarantee the most basic of human needs - drinking water.Īnd, as we've seen this week, we certainly haven't provided safe housing. In our lust to carve up this place and hawk it as a waterfront paradise, we crammed 4 million people along a flat and vulnerable coast. We've done some dumb things, starting with reckless planning and manic overdevelopment. The valor on display in South Dade makes Desert Storm look like a Tupperware party.īut, God, if you were testing us on how wisely we've cared for this astonishingly fragile peninsula, then we failed. Heroes walk every street, or what's left of the streets. God, was this hurricane a pop quiz on survival?īecause if you were testing courage and compassion, you won't find more of it anywhere. Sure seems peculiar that so many older homes survived your Hurricane Andrew with no damage, while newer subdivisions exploded into matchsticks. Or maybe it's not being enforced with what you'd call unflagging diligence. Who wouldn't be impressed?Īnd about that South Florida Building Code - well, maybe it's not as tough as they promised us.
"īelow is the column that Hiaasen wrote after Hurricane Andrew struck. "What South Florida needs is a killer hurricane, sudden and furious, an implacable tempest that would raze the concrete shorelines and rake away the scum and corruption. In one of his columns, the character envisions nature rising to undo the mess that has been made of Florida: His popular 1986 novel "Tourist Season" features as its main character a Miami newspaper columnist who embarks on a mad, bloody crusade against the state's destruction. Carl Hiaasen, a city columnist for the Miami Herald, is the author of several novels that rail against Florida's ruin by greed, stupidity and overdevelopment.
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