Granados: I teach ESL classes there.

Bentley: Elizabeth, when did you first realize that Hurricane Andrew might hit Miami?

Granados: Well, matter of fact, my brother called men from I think Ft. Myers from the west coast the day before and he asked me what I knew about the hurricane and it looked really bad and until that time I hadn’t had any idea at all that it was even coming. I don’t watch television. So I only knew about 12 hours in advance.

Bentley: What preparations did you make?

Granados: Well, I filled up the car. . .one of the cars with gasoline and I assumed that the weather people were exaggerating the effects because I’ve lived through many hurricanes in the past. I grew up in Florida and I just assumed that they were exaggerating and that it was not going to be as serious as it turned out to be. I had no idea. I did have some candles on hand and some canned food. I filled up the bathtub with water. I washed all the dishes and I washed all the clothes so that we could get through a few days without water if that should be necessary. But I didn’t rush out to the supermarket. I did see on television that the stores were crowded. Other than that I didn’t do anything. I didn’t take it terribly seriously to teal they truth.

Bentley: So you weren’t concerned about the storm as a major calamity?

Granados: No, I had no idea that it was going to be as serious as it was. No idea at all.

Bentley: Elizabeth, where were you during the hurricane?

Granados: Well I stayed it my house with my daughter and my dog and two cats. We live: in Coconut Grove and my husband was traveling with my other daughter and he kept calling home every couple of hours to see whether the hurricane was approaching and I kept telling him it wasn’t necessary to return because he was very nervous. He was staying abreast of everything. And I kept saying, no. no need to return, we can handle everything here.” But when I looked out the next morning I saw the destruction around me and the fact it was almost impossible to get out of my house, the next time that he telephoned after the hurricane, I told him that I thought it was about time to turn the car around and come back.

Bentley: Was your husband concerned because he had been through fps previous hurricanes’?

Granados: No. He had been through a couple of minor hurricanes, but he had really taken the warning seriously, much more so than I had.

Bentley: What kind of things happened to you during the hurricane?

Granados: Well, we stayed tuned with the television. My daughter has a battery operated television. We kept watching that. We listened to the radio. We slept off and on. We heard the power generators blow out. We heard trees snapping around us. And those would wake us up from time to time. So we were in the: house and we were more or less aware of what was going on outside.

Bentley: Now did you have any concerns or thoughts during the hurricane itself? I mean were you concerned about the windows blowing in and tile roof caving in, blowing away etc.?

Granados: No, as I said before, I grew up in Florida and I’ve lived through quite a few of these. Some pretty big hurricanes but nothing as serious as Andrew. But I guess I knew kind of what to expect so I was not panicking or anything. And our house is fifty years old and I realized it had been through other hurricanes. So, I didn’t worry too much.

Bentley: When was, what was the last hurricane you went through?

Granados: Well, there was Betsy in New York but that was a nothing hurricane. The last serious one that I recall was hurricane Donna back when I was in the eighth grade in the early 60’s. And that hurricane kept us out of school for a few days as I recall. It was major for the time.

Bentley: What did you do right after the hurricane?

Granados: Well, as soon as I realized that the sun had come up I tried try get outside my house. It was very difficult because seven of our trees had snapped in half. It was impossible to get the car out. There was debris everywhere so I guess my first reaction was, “oh my God, I’d better clean this up so that in case it should be necessary to get to a hospital than I will be able to do so. My cars were blocked in the car port.

Bentley: I guess you and your neighbors were all blocked. Was your entire neighborhood blocked off?

Granados: The entire neighborhood was blocked and all of our neighbors were out in the street as soon as the hurricane was officially over. We were all out assessing the damage. We saw how impossible it was to pass. There was no passage at all as far as cars were concerned.

Bentley: Do you recall what the very first thing was when you got up that morning and looked outside?

Granados: I remember looking out the kitchen window and seeing that the carport was up in the bamboo. That it had... it was just hanging up there... It was suspended. And the cement blocky that should have held it firmly into the ground were also hanging like they were toys. That was astounding.

Bentley: What was your first week like after the hurricane?

Granados: Well, the first week was a lot of hard physical labor because of the cleanup of the debris and the tree cutting and that sort of thing but also as you recall we were in the hot season. It was very hot in Miami and the temperature was uncomfortable. It was hot and muggy. We had no air conditioning, no telephone, no electricity and to get a hot meal was kind of an ordeal. There wasn’t enough ice in town. Ice wasn’t available and we couldn’t heat up food on the stoves. We had to eat out of cans. In fact we ate out of cans for almost a month. To get a cup of hot coffee was a real luxury in the: morning and I remember we had to boil water over a sterno can and that took a good fifteen minutes to get one cup of coffee hot.

Bentley: Were you able to buy sterno at your local store?

Granados: No, I was fortunate that my family who lives in Florida further north was able to get some cans of sterno down to me by a visiting relative.

Bentley: That was fortunate. Did you receive any other kind of help after the hurricane? From the military perhaps or the government maybe?

Granados: No I lived in a . . . I lived in Coconut Grove and we . . . besides heaving snapped trees and the loss of electricity and the loss of the telephone, we really didn’t suffer severe damage. We had a couple of roof tiles that blew off and as I said our carport but we didn’t lose a roof, an entire roof, and we didn’t lose our house. Our house was structurally sound so we were among the fortunate.

Bentley: Yeah, what about your telephone? Did it take very long to get your telephone and your lights and your water back on?

Granados: Oh God! It took over a month to get the electricity and the telephone. I’m sure people tried to call me and uh. . . You know. I would like. to be employed by Dade County Public Schools and that was a time that the public schools were getting ready to startup and I’ve had my application in for a while. I’m sure somebody was trying to hire me and was unable to get in touch with me. So they called the next name on the list and I lost out on that job opportunity.

Bentley: So. Hurricane Andrew has had an effect. on your professional life then?

Granados: Well, I can’t say so for a fact but I would suspect so yeah. Also in my classes I’ve seen how it has effected my students and at the Community college I’m aware of the fact that the enrollment has dropped this semester. I think that people who had already signed up immediately before the hurricane, they gritted their teeth and said. “Well, o.k. I’ve already paid my money. I guess I’ll go through with it.” But this term, now we’re in October, a lot of people have said. “Hey, life is just too difficult. I think I’ll postpone it for another term.” So our enrollment has dipped and I’ve seen students. . . I’ve had students who just start crying right after class. They have a hard time. For instance during a test they feel the pressure and at the end of the test they’ll come up to me and they’ll just start crying to me that they’ve lost their house and their husband is unemployed. They have to drive a couple of hours to get to class and then with the additional burden of them having to take a test they just can’t take it, and they snap and they start crying. And that’s kind of embarrassing and I feel for them too.

Bentley: So there’s some short tempers perhaps or at least a short... there’s an emotional situation.

Granados: There’s some emotional upheaval. That’s true.

Bentley: Where else do you teach?

Granados: I teach also at the University of Miami. Now the students there...it’s a completely different market. They’ve. . . most of them came in right after the hurricane. They were aware of trees that had, been toppled but I after think that their lives experienced such upheaval as the students from the other ... from the MiamiDade campus.

Bentley: Were you teaching at the University of Miami during the hurricane?

Granados: Yes, I was as a matter of fact. We had some private students that had come from Latin America and one in particular who had paid several thousands of dollars far a private course: uh, he started the week before the hurricane, he was scheduled to continue the week after the hurricane and uh, he didn’t seem to have any understanding of how severe the blow was to the people who live here year round.

Bentley: Why is that?

Granados: I suppose he hasn’t lived through a hurricane before. He just didn’t have, any understanding of how it was affecting those of us who lived here.

Bentley: Was he able to experience it because the University of Miami is not really in the devastated zone of South Miami so do yore think he even had seen some of the damage perhaps?

Granados: I think he wasn’t every aware of it except peripherally. He saw it on television but you know, television broadcasts stuff from Hollywood. It wasn’t really. . . it wasn’t real to him. He was commuting everyday from North Miami where: the devastation was much less severe than in the south. And I know that my coordinator suggested to him that perhaps he would like to have a refund and he could just go home. And he would not take a hint. He insisted on getting his money’s worth in spite of how difficult it was for the other instructors and myself to get there everyday. Remember, gasoline. We couldn’t even buy gasoline. A lot of the stations because they didn’t have electricity, couldn’t pump the gas. So for the instructors even to get to the class everyday had to use up gasoline which was in very short supply.

Bentley: It was very valuable at that time.

Granados: It sure was.

Bentley: O.K. well, that’s very good. Are there any other effects from the hurricane, professionally, which you might be able to think of that happened s pat changed your life somewhat? Like today for example, it’s been about two months now since the hurricane hit, Are there any effects which still linger on either, professionally or otherwise. Has there been any improvements to your life because of the hurricane?

Granados: I’ll tell you. It’s taken much longer to recover from the storm then I think anybody ever thought it would. Uh, everything has been more difficult than it should have been. For instance, to get a roofer to come out and repair the. . . to patch up the place that... where the tile fell off, that’s difficult. Getting people to replace that awning, the carport, it’s impossible, Nobody will do it. So it’s just taking much longer. Everything is . . . you feel more pressure... more stressful.

Bentley: So do you feel like you are doing more things yourself then? Do you feel very selfreliant?

Granados: You have to. Yeah because there’s nobody else to call. Who are you going to call? “They’re all busy down in South Miami. And if they are available they will charge three times what they did before the hurricane. So we can’t afford it.

Bentley: It’s a lingering economic effect then.

Granados: A, lingering economic effect. That’s right.

Bentley: And how’s that affect you in class? When you got home from class could you still feel like you have to do some work in your house, in your garden. or whatever you might be doing? You said your awning was blown away.

Granados: Gosh I’m worried about it all the time. As soon as I’m out of class I come home immediately and I get started working on one project or another and I tell you I think I have” another six months ahead of me of thinking how I’m going to replace this or that or what I’m going to do about one problem or another that resulted because of the hurricane.

Bentley: Are you able to keep up with your classes? The homework assignments that you need to be preparing for the next class. Are you able to keep up with that at all?

Granados: I am but this is the first semester that I have had to start getting up at five o’clock in the morning so that I can do everything that I have to do. Take care of my family, take care of the additional problems and the burdens of the house, plus correct all the papers that I’m normally responsible for. So I think that there just is not as much time as there was before because of the additional burden of the repair work that has to be done.

Bentley: So, the hurricane his actually increased your work load?

Granados: It certainly has...

Bentley: Now you teach, you come home and you have to work too.

Granados: That’s right. Well I was doing that before anyway but now there’s even more.

Bentley: Now there’s even more. OK. Well, thank you very much Elizabeth.

Granados: You’re welcome. It’s been a pleasure.