Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 10

A-10 PITTSBURGH POST-GAZLTTE SUNDAY. AUGUST 22. 1W NATIONAL Andrew's 6 powerful wind gusts hurt most i i Associated Press I Last year in Florida City an aerial view through a wide-angle lens of the destruction caused by Hurricane Andrew. makes me wanna give up, because I'm not used to asking people for nothing. Sometimes I get in this trailer and I just cry.

1 One year later, Andrew's scars remain By John Dorschner Miami Hefaid MIAMI The worst damage in Hurricane Andrew was caused by six swaths of powerful winds that lasted only five to 15 minutes, sweeping through broad areas of southern Dade County with peak gusts up to 200 miles per hour, according to a new study by Ted Fujita, considered by many to be the world's leading wind expert. "It's very rare to see these swaths," Fujita said. Most hurricanes sweep through non-urban areas, which means the swaths are difficult to detect. Fujita, 72, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, has spent the past year studying Andrew. For 1,500 hours, he estimates, he pored over 2,000 aerial photos of damage wrought by Andrew.

Looking block by block, house by house, sometimes even tree by tree, he searched for powerful, smaller winds hidden within the massive swirl of Andrew. The result: the most detailed look yet at what the winds were doing in the pre-dawn darkness while residents huddled in their closets and bathrooms, fearing for their lives. Fujita found winds within winds within winds. Mini-swirls and mi-crobursts and swaths danced madly within the powerful eye wall, smashing some neighborhoods, then skating away, leaving other subdivisions with comparatively little damage. The swaths had peak winds of 170 to 200 mph, while outside the swaths, he said, winds gusted up to 150 mph.

Fujita makes his estimates only in terms of peak winds bursts that may last a couple of seconds. He avoids the concept of "highest sustained winds," which is most often used in media reports. "Damage is caused by peak winds," he said. "It doesn't matter how long they last." The largest of these swaths, the Tamiami Swath, swept across Per-rine and Tamiami Airport with peak winds of 170 to 200 mph. It was by far the biggest 15 miles long and 5 miles wide.

"Nowhere has anyone ever reported a swath like this," Fujita said. Within a swath are other powerful winds, Fujita said. In several areas of west Dade, in Florida City, Naranja and Adams Key, Fujita detected microbursts momentary, powerful drafts that strike straight down at speeds of 50 to 175 mph. In many other areas, he saw evidence of vicious mini-swirls, which last only a few seconds and spin either clockwise or counterclockwise at 80 mph. Throughout south Dade, Fujita observed, the location of a house was a crucial factor in how much wind damage it received.

"If a house was on a north-south street, that's pretty bad," he said about homes in the Tamiami Swath. "The worst damage was to houses facing east." Most vulnerable of all: Houses with garages facing the wind. In many photos, Fujita saw that houses where garage doors blew in suffered much more damage than their neighbors' houses. "Boarding up a garage, or bracing the door, is very important," he said. Fujita said he was convinced preparation makes a difference.

Houses where the residents had protected the windows and doors could reduce the effect of hurricane winds by 10 to 20 mph. Counting the cost Some statistics related to Hurri-. cane Andrew and its effects: Estimated population of Home--stead, before Andrew: 30,000. Estimated population of Home- stead after Andrew: 18.000. Percentage of mobile homes destroyed, Florida City, 100.

Insured losses: $15.5 billion. Insured losses after Hurricane Hugo in 1989: $4.2 billion. Number of Florida property insurance policies that insurers want td drop since Andrew: 844,000. Traffic signs replaced in Dade County: 150,000 and counting. Number of domestic violence r' suits filed in 1992 in Dade Circuit Court: 4,586.

Number of domestic violence suits filed there in 1991:2,313. Number of storm victims who moved elsewhere in Dade County: 44.000. Number of storm victims who left Dade County: 57,000. signs of renewal. No event so heartened the people of south Dade County as the surprise announcement in June that flattened Homestead Air Force Base, slated for closure, would be resuscitated.

It was selected as a model base to serve as a national example of how such installations can be returned to their surrounding communities. Col. Rodney Bates will have more resources to work with as he and his staff work on the cleanup. The F-16s of the 31st Fighter Wing are gone. But they'll be replaced by planes belonging to Air Force Reserve units, the Florida Air National Guard and U.S.

Customs, as the base becomes a mixed-use, civilian and government facility. Military retirees were crushed, however, to learn that key facilities such as the hospital and commissary would not return. As many as 6,000 retired officers have left since Hurricane Andrew to seek the benefits of other military bases in the Sun Belt. The migration also has affected cities like Florida City, which lost half of its 8,000 residents, and Homestead, which lost 12,000 since the storm. The real estate boom that has hit southwest Broward County to the north is testimony to other defections from the storm zone.

But the cities are fighting to rebuild. In Florida City where Andrew blew away all of the city's government buildings, 90 Eercent of its houses and 65 percent of its tax ase a new $6 million municipal building will include a large room residents can use for meetings and activities. Also, each new public building will include a safe space designed to withstand winds as strong as Andrew's. And out on the edge of town, they'll break ground Tuesday for a new outlet mall, expected to double the city's tax base. Development will increase along U.S.

1, the road to the Florida Keys, to replace jobs and tax revenue lost to the storm. "It's gonna be crowded, commercial and very lucrative," said Katie Mitchell, assistant city manager in still lean west, pointing out the direction of Andrew's powerful wind bursts, which may have been as strong as 200 mph. The legacy of Andrew a year later includes less visible effects, such as a vast tangle of lawsuits by desperate property owners; a drastically revamped insurance system; and frustrated residents who, at a recent town meeting, complained to Gov. Lawton Chiles of neighborhoods overrun by burglars and crooked contractors. The state attorney's office has reported at least 90 cases of corrupt contractors, with arrests in 84 of the cases.

A fraud hotline was opened this month. Local politicians have revved up efforts to finish work of the most basic type debris cleanup, replacement of street signs and blocking off unsafe property. In some neighborhoods, residents are still paying the price. "My life ain't been right since," said Eva Brookins of Florida City, which along with its sister city of Homestead on the tip of the Florida peninsula, was flattened by the storm. She recalled huddling with her grandchildren under three mattresses as the storm raged.

"When it lifted up the roof, it was like we was in a big ball of fire," she said. In the remains of the squat brown house that was home before Andrew, Brookins splashes through puddles littered with photographs, broken appliances and food containers. For the past six months, she has shared a donated travel trailer with the three children and a friend. The unemployed 47-year-old, a stroke victim with a weakened arm, spends most of her time shuttling from one assistance program to the next in search of food and clothes, hoping to find a real place to live someday. "It's just hard," she said.

"It makes me wanna give up, because I'm not used to asking people for nothing. Sometimes I get in this trailer by myself and I just cry." Her story is repeated in pockets throughout the county, but there are many encouraging By Tracy Fields The Associated Press GOULDS, Fla. It's another 90-degree morning at Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church. The choir sings "Revive Us Again" to the accompaniment of a portable synthesizer organ. Worshipers wield hand fans, flapping like captive butterflies.

Instead of the usual biblical scene or picture of Martin Luther King the white fans bear the words "Andrew was yesterday. Recovery is today," and a toll-free number 'for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Since Hurricane Andrew destroyed its sanctuary, Mount Pleasant literally has been a church without walls, gathering every steamy Sunday under a borrowed, off-white tent with rolled-up sides. The hours of terror and violence, days of deprivation and misery that Hurricane Andrew brought to south Dade County have ended, but the experience is far from over. It's difficult to say when the distress will end for some, and things will never again be exactly as they were before last Aug.

24. The storm's damage estimates run higher' than $30 billion, making it the nation's most costly disaster. The human cost is much greater; as Andrew's survivors watch the Midwest struggle with flooding, they understand. "We can really feel sympathy and empathy with those folks," said Mount Pleasant's Rev. James C.

Wise. His advice? "Thank God for what's left." Dade County took the heaviest hit from Andrew. The progress of recovery differs wildly, depending on where you look. Whole neighborhoods and shopping centers remain gutted, as if the storm had just happened. But elsewhere, generally in more affluent areas, the steady racket and procession of construction workers have brought renewal.

The southern part of the county, once lush, doesn't have much shade now. But the remaining trees have greened, though many Homestead. The tempest's effects both bad and good linger in the keys, as well. A year ago, Boca Chita Key was a popular spot for boaters in Biscayne National Park. Located in Biscayne Bay east of Homestead, it functioned much like a rest area on, the highway, with restrooms and fresh wateij and historic limestone structures left frorti 50 years ago, when the little island was a playground for millionaires.

1 Since Andrew, Boca Chita's been closed, visited mostly by cormorants that perch in the few remaining trees, surveying the rubble of the restrooms scattered across the bleaching, shattered hulks of downed Australian pines. How high the medical ante? Surviving tjvin opens eyes, 'Blows my dad says "The hearts of America go out to the Lakebergs I'm not sure our wallets are going out. Arthur Caplan, medical ethicist sarily be favored over top-quality medical care for the gravely ill. "I would like to think that there's enough wasted dollars, particularly in administrative costs in our health-care system, that we can afford to do both," Ross said. "That we can use the outstanding technological advances that we've made to save those twins, but in addition make certain that kids are immunized and that women are getting prenatal care and guarantee it." The Lakebergs, who also have a 5-year-old daughter, said before the surgery Friday that even a 1 percent chance for one twin was worthwhile, and that they wanted to feel that everything possible had been done.

"We know what it's like to have children," Reitha Lakeberg, 24, said a few weeks ago. "Knowing you're going to lose one, or two, of them is hard to bear." Caplan acknowledged that when family members are "faced with these terrible, terrible choices," it is an enormous strain to sort out their own desires regarding a loved one from the complex advice they get from doctors. That gives doctors an enormous responsibility. "Doctors must make parents realize it's experimental, not therapeutic that it could make dying more miserable," Caplan said. "At some point, the doctors have to step forward and say, 'That level of chance is something we don't supplemented Medicaid program, provides $997 a day for an unlimited time.

Children's has said it will absorb charges not covered by the program. They will be considerable: The intensive-care unit charge is $1,800 a day; it does not include drugs, lab work, radiology, nursing or doctors. Children's has not given an estimate of the overall cost. Such extreme care for such a pitiful case "is not the kind of thing that Clinton has in mind when he talks about extending health insurance to everybody," Caplan said. Americans are beginning to learn that there are tradeoffs when it comes to health care, said Dr.

James L. Nelson, associate for ethical studies at the Hastings Center, a medical ethics think tank in Briar-cliff Manor, N.Y. "It's not necessarily a nasty, money-grubbing attitude to say that hundreds of thousands of dollars may be too much to spend to buy a small chance of life for one individual, when that same money might go toward improving the lives of many more people," Nelson said. While such prudence is easy to accept in abstract, it can seem rigid, even cruel, when dealing with babies who have names and who wriggle and smile on television. TWINS FROM PAGE A-l "Doing something is not always better than doing nothing," Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Minnesota, said in an interview last week.

"A slow, painful, miserable death is not better than quick, peaceful death." Few cases feature the tangle of emotions, grim medical facts and collossal financial considerations that were present in the Lakebergs' agony. Aspects of it, nevertheless, illuminate the nation's dilemma at a time when U.S. medicine can work near-miracles but costs are rapidly approaching $1 trillion a year. "The hearts of America go out to the Lakebergs," Caplan said. "Mine, too.

I have to tell you, I'm not sure our wallets are going out." The Lakebergs have no medical insurance, although both Children's and Loyola University Medical Center in suburban Chicago, where the twins were first examined, said financial factors did not affect the twins' treatment. Loyola's bill alone was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, hospital spokesman Mike Maggio said. Indiana Public Aid, the state- state, for private services tomorrow or Tuesday. The Lakebergs knew going into the surgery that Amy would die and that Angela had only a tiny charice. The couple napped and paced, prayed and cried in a Children's Hospital waiting room, while hospital employees gave them hourly updates.

They expected to wait for at least 10 hours. Kenny Lakeberg had prepared himself for the worst: that, both babies would die. He and his wife were astonished to learn, after just 5'2 hours, that the operation was over. Angela had made it. "They came back and.

said, You've got a baby Kenny Lakeberg said yesterday. 1 Angela now is hooked to a ventilator in the intensive care unit. She has a musical clown doll with her. Her mother gave her a crucifix yesterday morning. Kenny Lakeberg said he was optimistic his daughter would make it.

"I feel great," he said repeatedly. His wife, a shy, small woman, was more circumspect. "Yesterday Friday was difficult. I just pray that everything will work out. By Stacey Burling The Philadelphia Inquirer The eyes were what astounded Kenny Lakeberg.

Not even a day after a team of 18 surgeons separated her from her twin sister, 7-week-old Angela LaW berg had her eyes open. 1 "The doctors gave us this chance, this 1 percent chance, and here we are with this little baby with her eyes open," Kenny Lakeberg said yesterday morning. "That's what blows my mind. I didn't expect this, this fast." Angela was in critical but stable condition at Children's Hospital's intensive care unit yesterday hospital officials said. Her blood pressure and circulation were good, and her lungs appeared to be improving, according to hospital officials.

Doctors have said that the 72 hours following the operation are critical. Her sister, Amy, with whom she shared a heart and liver, died on the operating table Friday. The heart was not strong enough for both of them, and doctors said Angela was the better candidate to survive. Amy's body is expected to be flown today to Indiana, her home "Our society seems capable of mustering enormous concern and attention for children in desperate circumstances," Caplan noted. "We seem unable to muster anything like the same momentum or emotions when it comes to trying to prevent problems." In Philadelphia alone, the number of preschool children without proper immunization is estimated at as many as 50,000.

Two summer programs narrowed the gap by about 5,000 children, city Health Commissioner Robert K. Ross said. But Ross doesn't think better preventive measures should neces.