As monstrous Andrew sped toward the Bahamas and her husband scurried around to prepare, Gina Guilford sat down to read the Sunday morning Herald.
“I was very blasé about it. What I remembered from hurricanes growing up was that nothing much ever happened.”
Hurricane Betsy, a Category 3, was the last storm to hit South Florida in 1965, and it had crossed Key Largo, sparing most of Miami. This time was different : The fiercest winds of Andrew’s northern eye wall would scrape her home near Coral Reef Park.
The house, built in the 1950s of sturdy concrete block, stood up. But she, her husband, three kids and a dog spent the night in a closet and bathroom as rain and wind poured in through broken windows, ruining almost everything they owned. Outside, a heavy plank decapitated her husband’s car, then “shish-kabobed” her minivan through the driver’s seat. Pulverized plants had turned the home a strange shade of green.
Guilford has never taken a hurricane lightly since, calling Andrew “one of those Dr. Phil moments that shape your life. I was just happy that we were all right.”
“What I came to realize is that all of the stuff you spend your life accumulating doesn’t matter. It can all be gone in a blink of any eye. It changed my perception of just what is really important.”
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