Why is Miami almost always lucky?

[KeyLargoDave]

correction: Coconuut Grove is in Miami....

I was wrong if implying otherwise. Coconut Grove is, I guess you'd say, a neighborhood in the City of Miami.

Coconut Grove and just north of the Miami river is the area where Miami was founded. Miami city hall is at Dinner Key, and Andrew did wreck that marina. Huge Banyan trees blocked many streets in the Grove after Andrew. Power was out until Friday night or later for many. Fences, outbuildings, flimsy structures were destroyed. Surge was high there, not far from the high point of 17-18' (if memory serves) to the south.

Thankfully, the old homes in Coconut Grove did pretty well, there was nowhere near the structure damage of farther south (AFAIK from staying there about two weeks after). A lot of the grove cottage-type homes have hipped roofs and probably had hurricane ties before it was required elsewhere. Some had original shutters like you see in Key West and New Orleans and other places where people have always known the power of the wind and sea.

[Patrick99]

Good synopsis of what happened in Coconut Grove. People tend to forget that other areas besides Homestead had significant damage. I do remember that the storm surge was quite destructive all up and down South Biscayne Bay, from Turkey Point to Mercy Hospital. I can only imagine how it must have been out on Elliott Key and Boca Chita Key.

But anyway, I do believe that those old Miami-Dade homes are very capable of withstanding hurricanes. Same in Key West. Heck, my family has one of those old houses in Old Town right by the graveyard. It looks like a painted wooden shack raised on cinder blocks that would collapse like a matchstick house in any kind of wind......but it *did* hold up during the great hurricane of 1919, and many others.