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Strand: When did you first realize that the hurricane might hit Miami? Brescher: Uh, I guess when it hit the Bahamas but we didn't believe it because it was heading directly north for a long period of time Then around one thirty we called the weather service from the marina and they said it was heading toward us and uh we still didn't really know where it was to hit. Strand: What preparations did you make? Brescher: Uh, we have a procedure for during the hurricane. For example we move all of our trucks out then we move all the canvas we take all the trash cans and put them in the bathrooms. Then uh for the boat owners we give them a manual when they dock here. We made sure everyone got one, its a manual how to prepare for the hurricanes and stuff like that. I think that's what saved a lot of damage at our marina in particular, because the owners had this manual and were able to be aware and maybe even think about preparing for an unlikely situation. Just to go back, we always make sure they got one of these. Strand: What did you think it would be like before the storm? Brescher: I've been through this, as a standard procedure. Uh, I have been through every storm including Donna, its interesting that was when I was heading down to the University for my freshman year. It hit and we were put in a hotel and just waited it out. Strand: Where were you during the hurricane? Brescher: I was in my house down in Homestead. Strand: Who was with you? Brescher: I had my wife, my mother, my two dogs and three cats. And the bird. Yeah I took him home from the marina just in case. The hurricane was gonna start to move north so I took him from the marina. Our original plan was to get out but the mothers said we could sit through this we don't need to get out. We didn't think it would be that bad. Strand: What happened to you during the hurricane? Brescher: I was moving making sure, we would move everybody to one side of the house at a time. We kept moving around because when one of the walls would start to flex uh you couldn't hear because the pressure was dropping it affects your hearing. As the increase of the roar of the storm we couldn't hear it didn't seem like it would get louder, but it was because of the barometric pressure. My mothers ears were severely damaged because of this. I told her she had bad hearing before but she finally did something about it after the hurricane because they got worse. She's in her eighties, which is understandable. But the uh, fortunately our house withstood during the storm except the roof went afterward. We have this plasterboard type roof, and it stood during the storm but with the rain and stuff afterward it just came crashing through. One side of my house lost all of the shutters, but again fortunately a tree fell down on the house and block all the wind and stuff from those windows. I didn't have a piece of broken glass in the place. Strand: What were your concerns or thoughts during the hurricane? Brescher: Just to hope to hell the house stayed together long enough for us to last. Just the way things were moving we didn't know just how much longer things would last. I went out during the hurricane when the eye was passing over us. I didn't want to stay out there very long but I wanted to see how things were holding up. It was so dark. I really couldn't see all of the damage as of yet it was too dark out there. It lasted for I'd say about twenty minutes. Things were moving so fast that I really didn't want to stay out there too long. So uh when it started up again, we just moved to the other side of the house and sat it through. Strand: What was the first thing you thought about after the hurricane? Brescher: The first thing was to look out and see how much damage there was, and to look around the house. That was the first thing. Then to go over to my mother-in-laws who was staying by herself in her house uh got her out, she was ok. Then the next door neighbor, got her out and she was ok. Then there was a visitor staying in my uncle's house which is right next door to mine, so I checked on him. He had moved into the living room and had got under a mattress and just laid on the floor under the mattress. Got him out. Then just started going to the condos. Once I found out they were gone, we just started spreading down. I got down, I had a rental about five or six condos down from me, I got there and my condo still had part of its roof. All the windows were blown out. And there was an elderly couple, about eighty-eight they were down here. I didn't see there car so I assumed that they left before the storm. But I saw their neighbors car and I turned around and saw that they had parked their car down the street a ways. So I knew they were in the condo somewhere. So we started digging through the rubble. Because their house was totalled. They were in the bathroom. The whole thing had collapsed in on them. And uh then we worked to get them out. They were in their nightclothes. He had caught a two-by-four right here on the knuckles and it had ripped the skin back oh about five or so inches. It was the perfect cut to where the skin just pulled right back. He had uh three broken ribs a dislocated shoulder. So uh I had to get him out so I could get him out and sit them down out of there. She had a uh dislocated hip or something and they were in shock. The bad part was there was all this insulation, you know the pink stuff they sell. To insulate your house and stuff, this stuff was like crust. It just painted these peoples faces. And all the tar from the roofs it all just went into the air. And these people had it embedded in their faces and eyes and ears. I mean I haven't had my car fixed since the hurricane, I mean I got the windows replaced but I am still picking pink stuff out of the car in the dents and stuff. So then I got into the house and the wife was unconscious but she was coming to a bit. So I had to get another guy. He was stuck between the wall and something. Somehow the wall had locked itself so the man was stuck flush against the wall. He couldn't move, he was pressed and couldn't get out. So we got him out. So we got everyone out and the woman was coming to. So we moved people to cars and this guy had a pickup truck so we loaded people in there, we had to get these people to the hospital. A paramedic had stopped and had said that if they are conscious enough then take them to the hospital. We couldn't even get to the hospital because of all the down stuff. So we got in a Rabbit and its windows had been blown out but I needed to take these people to my house. We had to make sure they had I.D. so that when we took them to the hospital. Like Medicare or something like that. One guy didn't have his so I had to go back and search through the rubble to find the card. He was still with it enough that he could remember what pants he had worn the night before so I could look for them and get his identification. I had taken all of my medical stuff off of the boats and brought it home with me. So I had some medical stuff to clean up these peoples cuts and scrapes. The big problem with that is that this one guy had a heart condition and he had those patches you were on your chest. They had fallen off during the storm because of the rain so he had gone into cardiac arrest. I had to search again through the rubble to find his extra patches for him. So then I worked over to my moms house, she had left her cat in the house. Her house had flattened. The concrete beam that connects to the walls had just flown through the air. It is seventy-five feet long and it had just lifted up and landed on three cars in a nearby parking lot. Then we started looking through her neighbors house, or rubble since that was what it was. We knew the neighbors were in there. So we looked and we found him, he was dead. The big problem was that we couldn't get help down there. The state police tried to get through to help us couldn't get any kind of medics or anything. Those guys were out taking care of their own stuff, and that was a big problem for us. It was such a massive area that you really didn't know where to begin. So you just focused on your little area of the mass destruction. Strand: What was your first week like after the hurricane? Brescher: Well after we got everyone settled out of their homes that were destroyed. We were able to find one of the telephones that could be used. We didn't have any electricity so the touch tone phones don't work without electricity. So my mother-in-law has one of the old dial phones, she never was much for technology, so we hooked that up. But we could only call long distance. So we would call my brother-in-law and sister and they would call the airports and make ticket reservations for the women and then we would get them to the airport. They would all go up north to various places. My mom went up to Chicago and my mother-in-law went up to Jersey. And uh the neighbors went into Detroit, just tried to get them all in different places away from here. All the women out of there. They just walked away to. Then uh the sons came down. My brother-in-law came down, his sons came down. The main thing was that we were going through freezers, and houses to gather up what we could. We were barbecuing everything. We lived off of the grill. We would search houses for propane tanks for the grills. All the food and heat came from the grills. The gas was mostly the only thing left of the houses, so we would use it since no one else was. We were just trying to get things squared away and survive day by day. Strand: Did you receive help after the hurricane? Brescher: Well, it took a few days, but we got some great help from people from the University of Miami. They were great. The problem was getting down there. They had employees helping. They came down and helped me out of my house, the stuff you could salvage at least. I had a warehouse in Homestead. So they worked with the trucks and vans from the University. They let me use their trucks to move stuff. As far as Red Cross, FEMA, the Salvation Army, they were mainly handling...they'd set up posts where you could go to get supplies you needed. But you had to be able to get out there, and barely anyone could. So we had people go out there with trucks and bring stuff back to our little area and dispense stuff to us. The weird part was that if you had water for that day you were grateful. You never thought about the day after this one, just one by one. And, uh, until I could get out, my wife went up and stayed in Coral Gables at her boss's, and when I was allowed to go out, I stayed out on the boat at the marina. So I could start making repairs here. I would work down at my house during the day and come back up here and work on the marina in the late afternoon and night and then sleep here also. So I would just go around like that. The couny gave us no help, very little. Uh, the salvagers came in and in the marina stole things including boats. Very nice boats, yeah we had a big problem with that. Strand: Has the hurricane significantly changed your plans for the short term and long term future? Brescher: Yes definitely. Because their loss of houses has moved everyone in with my wife and I. Their old enough that they can't go back and work on things their selves and they really can't do very much. And they kind of liked having their own house. So now I am building their own rooms and bathrooms so they'll have their privacy within our house. So we basically lost all five of the condos, so we still own the land, but it is being knocked over and restored. But it brought everybody into the same house. Strand: When did you come back to the marina? Brescher: A few days after the hurricane. Probably the third or fourth day that I could actually get out here. They weren't letting people over here right after. I first came after I drooped my mother off at the airport. It interesting because since I was living in such devastation and demolition I figured the rest of the world around me was the same. So I thought the marina would be a destroyed from the wind and all. Its hard to describe but I couldn't imagine that other people were in any better shape than me. Strand: Describe your reaction to the sight of the marina. Brescher: Well to be honest it wasn't that bad. I saw some minor repairs that had to be done. Mainly the trailer had flipped, but it was still there and uh we had high water so a lot of stuff had been washed through. Everything was so minor it was hard to worry about. Strand: Did you feel the marina would be restored quickly? Brescher: Yeah. I figured we would fix the minor problems then it would be fine. We were better off than those folks down at Black Point Marina and over at Monty Trainers. We are pretty much full functioning now. There are still some things to work on, but were really the only marina around that's ready for all the influx of boaters right now. Strand: Were boat owners quick to respond to the threats of the hurricane? Brescher: You bet. I think the fact they had those manuals really helped to. Everyone was pretty much right on top of it. There were some that came last minute, but actually I really didn't have too many. I left here about four o'clock or four thirty myself. I had just finished walking all of the piers and checked everything, we did the best we could do. Then the uh police captain was waiting for me making sure the areas clear of everyone. We probably ran into the last minutes, one of the biggest losses was in all our instructions and all our dealings its been understood that the bridges do not close until the winds reach thirty-five miles per hour. In this case we had a beautiful day I can understand closing the bridges for evacuation. Its a Sunday and nobody was around, the bridges just locked down, they weren't allowed to go through. And everybody who tried to get up the river got sent back. They had reserved spaces but couldn't get through so they had to come back. So we did the best we could. They anchored them in the Marine Stadium. Meanwhile these people had sent people up the roads to meet them up there to drive them back. There was so much confusion. We found out, well nobody will admit, nobody will say why they did it. They said we never said that, you guys said what the closing rules would be, we never did. But we found out that there was a lot of pressure coming from shipping and uh basically they didn't want to worry about all of the small boats in their way on the Miami River blocking the river. Cause if they sunk in the river they couldn't get the shipping in and out. Meanwhile they were shipping stuff within the next two days. Strand: Describe some of the reactions of those boat owners who came to find their boat. Brescher: They uh, we had one case of one of the owners who tried to get on the River but couldn't get on it. So he anchored right under the causeway and uh his boat sank. But we knew it was floating the day after the storm and the next day, the second day it sank. He had just had a major financial set back....so maybe you can put these pieces together. And we only had two boats, one was up on the dock. The owner before he left he said well this will determine whether I have a new boat this year. His boat was completely trashed, and he now has a new boat. The second boat that came up on the dock, the owner had died in July and his son had not dealt with the boat yet. So there was no insurance with that. Most of the guys came down just to rubberneck and look at the sights of what had happened. They would also help to clean up the marina as much they could. Strand: Are there boat owners that haven't yet come back for their boats? Brescher: Yeah there is this guy that never came back for his boat. It's uh sitting over here, we've sent registered letters, we've tried to call him. That little boat at this point has been stripped of anything worth something. It still sitting over there. And we still can not get hold of the owner. He sends us check for the payments but has not thought about his boat, or maybe doesn't want to. Oh it'd be interesting to just revert back for a second to when we were talking about damage. I showed you the picture, our major damage was the moorings. What it was is that boats actually lifted their moorings and carried them with them. We found moorings in the Key, we found moorings out in the channel, and out of eight boats, ten boats were totalled out, but four of them were never found. One was found outside the Rusty Pelican about a month ago. The buoy floated atop somehow. Somehow it travelled with its mooring under or maybe over the Rickenbacker to where it was found. And the others we think that one was stolen, a very beautiful boat very heavily anchored. Strand: Do you have any overall damage estimated of marina and boats? Brescher: Overall damages, I can't say exactly but uh, it's expensive but it's under with the boats and all. I'd say its under five-hundred thousand. Strand: Do people still remember the hurricane of 1992? Brescher: Yeah, we get that a lot of people that travel through here and have been here before and have been down to No Name and are just shocked. That's probably the biggest shock. Is looking over from the water and not seeing all of the trees that used to be in down by the lighthouse. A perfect example of a before and after shot is found in National Geographic. The one they did one the hurricane. It shows the it has two pictures of the before and after, its just beautiful. Strand: Is there anything that you would like to tell us that we haven't asked you? Brescher: The uh, one thing that people should dwell more on, see everybody had these prehurricane plans, they should dwell more on preparing for after the storm. Surviving after the storm. Oh everybody came up with hurricane plans, how to do this and how to do that, how to prepare. But what we never prepared for is after. The salvagers came in and we have to worry about these things. How can you control this how can you control supplies. The other thing is the safety factor. When you have a lot of sunk boats, the gasoline sunk with it. You have fuel and batteries floating around so it becomes dangerous for someone to go down and try and help their boat out. The only thing I had expected here is that with the hurricane that the outgoing tied would wash the marina right through and push it to the other side of the road. I had really good cleanup men that were very careful to know that the boats were like bombs sitting on the side of the road. The salvagers could have been blown up for as carelessly as they were handling the boats. Nobody in the county or in control knew what was going on and as they say they can't get anything done in those offices until the air conditioning gets back on. We had a lot of chaos. A lot of people trying to take control but didn't understand the situation. But I think its more important to have an after plan for the hurricane. Prepare for supplies. The fact that I had two first aid kits was pure luck. I didn't know how to use that stuff except for putting on a couple bandaids. And I ran out of most of my supplies. People have to realize that we go day by day, and now we have to learn from this and figure out ways to help people after the hurricane. That's when they need it.
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