Twenty-five years ago this month, that disaster was Andrew, a hurricane that devastated a large swath of South Florida, including the house in whose master bedroom closet I sheltered through the night with my wife and five kids. The storm took our roof and our possessions. It left us effectively homeless.
With nowhere else to go — we’d been in town only a year — we found our way to the office of my employer, the Miami Herald, where we shared our tale of woe. And Pete Weitzel, then the Herald’s managing editor, told us he had an empty house we were welcome to shelter in.