Quintairos: When did you first realize that Hurricane Andrew might hit Miami?

Martinez: Well to be honest with you, I didn’t think Hurricane Andrew was going to hit Miami. On Saturday, I went with a friend of mine on his boat. We spent the whole day out on sea. The sea was beautiful. It was calm; the sun was shining very hot. There was really no indication, that we were threatened by a hurricane approaching South Florida. That same Saturday night, I went out with a couple of friends. Still there were no indications that a hurricane was going to hit South Florida. On Sunday morning at eight o’clock, I had to take my father to the airport because he was leaving to New York on business; and at that time still there was little concern; but still we were not sure it was going to actually hit South Florida. About 9:30am when I got back from the airport we saw the news and they were kind of decided that the hurricane was coming; but they were not still for sure. They told us at approximately 1010:30am, was when the news finally arrived that the hurricane was actually going to hit South Florida and we should take necessary precautions.

Quintairos: Does your father live with you in Miami?

Martinez: Yes, my father does live with me here in Miami.

Quintairos: How did it feel that your father wasn’t going to be with you here in Miami?

Martinez: Well it didn’t feel too good, even though I have never been through a hurricane and I didn’t know the damage and the power of the hurricane it comes with. I wasn’t too nervous but still it wasn’t the same because my dad is always with us for any bad occasion or moment that a father should be with the family. And it was like pretty mixed up, it was pretty bad.

Quintairos: Does anyone else live with you in your home besides your father?

Martinez: My mother.

Quintairos: How did your father feel that he wasn’t going to be with you and your family?

Martinez: Well my father didn’t think Hurricane Andrew was going to hit, that’s why he proceeded to go to New York just as he had intended to. Once he got to New York, and we all realized that Hurricane Andrew was going to hit, then he felt really horrible to the fact that he had left us here. He thought he had abandoned us here in a time that he should of been with us, to take charge and to do what ever is possibly necessary to provide for our safety and himself also. But he felt pretty bad that he left us. But he wanted to come back to Miami anyway possible, but due to the fact that the airport was closed, he couldn’t come by airport. He wanted to come by a bus but we convinced him that it would be dangerous. And he just wanted to do anything to get himself over here. So we just told him to forget it and that we would manage with out him. And we would do everything that had to be done.

Quintairos: So what preparations did you do before the hurricane?

Martinez: Well that same Sunday after we were notified that the hurricane was going to hit South Florida, we proceeded to go to Publix and try to buy the necessary supplies of food, candles, water, batteries, anything that could be of need to us during the time of stress that we were going to be expecting to go through.

Quintairos: Who is “we”?

Martinez: My mother and I, which were the ones at Publix buying the food.

Quintairos: What did you think that it would be like before the storm?

Martinez: I thought it was going to be a time of headache. I thought people were going to be all over the supermarket like little bees hovering the things they needed, and that’s what it actually was. I mean people were just all over the streets going crazy. I mean they just were raving and raving about things, and people needing things, and they weren’t even able to get things for themselves. So it was pretty tough, pretty tough.

Quintairos: Do you think a lot of people weren’t prepared for the hurricane, though it was hurricane season?

Martinez: I definitely thought there was a lot of people who were not prepared, including myself. Like I said prior to this I had never been in a hurricane, so it didn’t really cross my mind that a hurricane was actually going to come to us, South Florida.

Quintairos: So when you hear that there is a hurricane, you feel that there is no danger?

Martinez: I used to do that, now I think about it twice. Now I probably would take some precautions, but I wouldn’t go and buy boards or anything. I would definitely you know maybe have a couple of candles lying around the house, some batteries, some extra tape, some of the things to help me in the situation.

Quintairos: So you feel it takes something disastrous to occur in order for people to be prepared and not feel worried?

Martinez: Unfortunately yes, before they may need to, people don’t really realize things until it actually happens to them. People are hard headed and that’s unfortunate to say but it is true, people are.

Quintairos: Did you prepare your home in anyway before the hurricane?

Martinez: Well after we got back from shopping for food and water and necessary things, we proceeded to bring all the furniture that we had outside the patio, inside the house; which was pretty tough task because we have a lot of furniture and things, that we had to rearrange all the furniture inside the house so we can include all the things from outside. We also taped up all the windows, we took the spotlights down, we tried to taped up the fans that we had outside. Pretty much taping was the major task, also preparing the house in itself. But other than that we really didn’t have any concern. About plants, we couldn’t do anything about the plants. We also brought in the plants that were outside, the smaller plants that definitely could be destroyed or could be used as an object by the hurricane to be tossed around by the wind. So we thought the good thing was to put it inside the house to prevent anything, hurting anybody else or ourselves.

Quintairos: Where were you during the hurricane?

Martinez: During the hurricane I spent it at my house. We stayed here and we just…

Quintairos: Who was with you during the hurricane?

Martinez: During the hurricane, my mother, my grandmother, and I were the ones who were spending the hurricane here in my house.

Quintairos: What happened to you during the hurricane?

Martinez: Well during the hurricane in itself I pretty much slept through the first part of the hurricane. At about four in the morning I heard a shattering sound that woke me up. At that point we lost all electricity and that’s when I got up and we realized I was in the middle of the hurricane. And we just proceeded. I went out and checked around the house to see if it wasn’t one of my windows that broke. No windows had broken luckily, and from then on, I just stayed up checking and making sure that every so often, about every ten minutes, I would check the windows again, I would check the doors. There was a lot of wind and my mom was concerned that the wind might blow open one of the doors that we have in the house. So I had to go and put a chair closely to the door so it won’t be opened by the wind; but other than that I wasn’t a bit to concerned with my house in itself because I knew that the windows were shut well, and even though a window would have broken, the tape was taped extremely well. I mean we couldn’t see glass because it was all taped so I mean it might have broken in itself but chances of that happening were not even there, if they were actually.

Quintairos: What were your thoughts during the hurricane?

Martinez: Well during the hurricane I had a lot of things going through my mind: I was scared for myself, my family, I was scared for my friends. I was, I needed to know how some friends were that were in houses that were not as strong as mine. So I was concerned about their well-being. I was concerned about just pretty much keeping calm myself and my family, my immediate family, which is my grandma and my mom which were in the house with me. Other than that I tried to keep in touch with everybody. I called friends; I called family members. Luckily the phone was intact. Nothing happened to the telephone lines, so we were able to keep in touch with everybody, so that was one great advantage that we had. So that is pretty much what we did.

Quintairos: What did you do right after the hurricane?

Martinez: After the hurricane passed, we proceeded and we rechecked the house internally. We made sure nothing had broken. No windows were damaged. No doors were damaged. After that we proceeded to go outside of our own house to make sure my car was outside. I wanted to make sure my car wasn’t dented or anything, which actually it was dented. A shingle fell on it. We noticed we lost a lot of shingles. There were shingles all over the front yard, all over the backyard. There were shingles in the pool. We had leaves of the coco trees inside the pool. We had a lot of dirt in the pool. I mean pretty much the most damage I believe we had was mostly trees. Luckily in our neighborhood that was the biggest suffrage, was trees and plants. Houses in itself didn’t lose too much. There wasn’t too much damage to the physical aspect of the house, except that we lost a lot of shingles. But shingles is something which can be replaced not like the actual body of the house.

Quintairos: What was the first thing you thought about after the hurricane hit?

Martinez: Well I was in shock, I mean I was like, I was speechless, I could not believe that nature could do such a thing. That nature had the power to destruct as hard as it did in South Florida. I was pretty lucky. I had already heard in the news that morning that there was some sections in South Florida that had been hurt really bad, and I was looking around my neighborhood and seeing the destruction it caused in my neighborhood; and then thinking that “wow!” I think we were lucky, considering that other neighborhoods were worse than ours. I think we came out pretty lucky.

Quintairos: What was the first week like after the hurricane?

Martinez: The first week was really, it was torture. I mean being myself, a city boy, and use to the good life, I mean the air conditioning every day. I’m use to not having to go through trouble cooking, cleaning, and doing other things. That first week was definitely a challenge; but it was good, because it provided for us to stick together with the family and friends. It made us consider what life is really all about. Life is not all about just having materials and things. It is more of a spiritual, and just believing in good things and helping one another out. It was pretty tough not being able to live with air conditioner, which would manage to be no big deal. After that first day I got use to not living with the AC and we went, it was funny, because we had to cook, obviously we have a stove, but we couldn’t cook with the stove because we had no electricity to cook it up. So we had to cook in a barbecue, but the point was that we had no charcoal so that was a real task. We didn’t know how in the world we were going to cook, but we knew that we had to cook because we had a lot of food in the refrigerator that could spoil if we didn’t eat it. So we, what we had to do was we had to cut some wood that we had in the garage. We had to cut it up, and we proceeded and used it as charcoal for ourselves to eat. And so pretty much that’s how we cooked. So it was pretty good. Actually the taste of the food was pretty good. We didn’t get charcoal to approximately three days after, when my godmother was able to find charcoal ‘cause they didn’t even have charcoal in the stores. So that’s pretty much what we had to do.

Quintairos: So you weren’t able to go to the stores to get any extra supplies?

Martinez: The first two days I went walking. One time to Publix and first of all it was closed. And second of all everything was empty. Nobody had supplies, nobody had nothing what so ever. It was pretty distressing. I mean being in need of something and not being able to buy it. We had money but the supplies were not there. So it was pretty tough. We were running out of ice also for the cooler. We had four or five coolers to keep food and stuff, and we were running out of ice. And they had suggested for us to go buy some dry ice. So about three or four days after the hurricane, we heard of some individual selling dry ice. And so we proceeded to go on that particular morning. We called this individual and he told us to be there at a certain time. I think it was Thursday morning or Friday morning, I don’t know, I don’t remember now. And we went and we had to make a line, they were selling dry ice there, it was a 60 pound block of dry ice for sixty dollars, which I found pretty expensive at first. But actually it was pretty expensive, but in a time of need you have to do what you have to do. If you have the means to do get it, well your lucky. Other people didn’t have means to get it, and they weren’t able to buy dry ice. I felt pretty bad I paid sixty dollars for a block of dry ice. I thought it was pretty steep, I mean I was pretty outraged at the fact that the guy was asking for sixty dollars. I asked the guy for a receipt, the guy said he wasn’t going to give out any receipts to the customers. I asked him why. He just gave me the run around. I was pretty upset. The following day a friend of mine went to the same place, I told her to go. And the same block of ice, I bought for sixty dollars, I think she got it for thirty five dollars which was a sum of money which was less than mine. And I told her it was incredible how people, just taking advantage of people in a time of crisis. And it was pretty sad actually, I was pretty outraged that people were taking advantage.

Quintairos: Did you see a lot of price gougers out there?

Martinez: To be honest with you as far as I know, as far as I’m concerned that was the only price gouger that I saw or that I had to be directly involved with. I mean I’m sure there probably were, and there were because I heard it on the news; but not that I had to deal with them directly.

Quintairos: Did you have to go to work or to school during the first week after the hurricane?

Martinez: No, we didn’t go to school that first week of the hurricane. Work was closed also for that week. I believe we went to work that Friday morning for a couple of hours or so. It was just to make sure everything was working fine; but we didn’t really work that day, we just made sure the structure of the building was fine and stuff. We worked, I believe, we started working on Monday. After the hurricane is when we started work. Work is very hectic. We had trailers which hadn’t been processed due to the hurricane. But it was nothing we couldn’t manage, I mean we just worked long hours.

Quintairos: Where do you work at?

Martinez: I work for UPS.

Quintairos: Did you receive help after the hurricane?

Martinez: Help in itself we didn’t receive any, because we weren’t in such a position that we needed help. So then pretty much we just help ourselves. You know after we were able to buy stuff, we go back. And buying every necessities we needed, we help the family out, helping them clean out their yard, helping them get back into the ring of things. UPS was helping the employees which I was really proud of them. They were giving food; they were giving wood; they were giving water; they were giving clothing; they were giving anything and everything they could possibly get their hands on to help their employees get back into the ring of things. They were also helping the community, not as much as the employees; they would also give water and food to other communities.

Quintairos: How did you decide to help out the community?

Martinez: Well after being in the road for two days because the first two days I didn’t get out of my house except walking to Publix I didn’t drive anywhere in particular. I finally realized that traffic was going to be something that had to be fixed. Somehow I had to help somewhere because it was just incredible, the lines, the traffic, the people. It’s just really bad. So then I thought to myself, well you know maybe they should have some more people working in the intersections helping out alleviate the situation to help people get through the intersection throughout or with the least passively possible.

Quintairos: What motivated you to do it?

Martinez: Well after seeing how UPS was helping people. After seeing other people struggling to help other people. I kind of felt the need to help the community also. Sometimes when I was working, not to have my house wrecked, and having every large piece of valuable property of mine erect, luckily, so I thought I had some time to give, I mean I had already done some of the things that I had to do around my house, so I proceeded to see which way I could probably help the community.

Quintairos: How did you find out where you could go to volunteer as a traffic light controller?

Martinez: Okay I really didn’t have any idea of who to call, I mean I did have the idea to call the police and they might have anybody or somebody or an indication on how I can proceed in doing that; so that’s what I did I called Metro Dade and they informed me that I should call the Red Cross hotline and they might be able to help me. So I proceed, and I called the Red Cross hotline and they told me to go into the local office and then proceed from there, get an intersection. We were pretty much able to choose an intersection which we wanted to work in. At times they gave us intersections in which they were in real need of help, so they would assign us to it, but other then that; they were all pretty much taken care of by other people. We were pretty much at ease to pick which intersection, I…

Quintairos: Did you receive any training on how to direct traffic?

Martinez: Pretty much, they just told us to be patient; and they told us pretty much to give traffic the same amount of time on both directions, not to be bias on traffic. They told us to respect the laws or try to apply them a bit, and they told us that people making lefts should go first and people making rights should go second. Basically just simple little things that you should follow, other than that; we were on our own.

Quintairos: Did you feel it was sufficient training?

Martinez: Well I guess in the situation which you are at, they really couldn’t give you much more training than that. Being a citizen you should know how traffic works, and I mean pretty much, I had never done that. But I had instructed people to go in lines before, I mean go here, go there, and pretty much just apply the same thing to the traffic situation. That’s pretty much what I did.

Quintairos: What intersection did you volunteer at?

Martinez: I volunteered for the intersection on 107th and Coral Way.

Quintairos: How many hours a day would you volunteer?

Martinez: I volunteered between four and six hours daily.

Quintairos: From what time to what time; from what time in the morning to what time at night were traffic light volunteers working.

Martinez: They would volunteer, I think, from about nine in the morning to about, about almost dawn, just when the sun was going down. They would rarely, I mean on some occasions, some would work a little bit later, but usually after dark, they pretty much just left.

Quintairos: Did you have any breaks?

Martinez: Breaks in itself I really didn’t have too many I had to take my own water, my own food. Once in a while a cop might pass by the intersection and I might ask him to stay for five or ten minutes so I could go to the restroom or something like that; but other than that, I was on my own. And I just had to do it the best way I possibly can.

Quintairos: When you took shifts, when someone else came in to take your place, how did that work?

Martinez: At times officers would bring personnel to the intersection, depends if the person would come in their own car. So that’s pretty much how it worked.

Quintairos: So they would basically just walk out into the street.

Martinez: Right..

Quintairos: And they would switch.

Martinez: And we would switch.

Quintairos: And when you would have your lunch or your water break, did you just walk out to the curb or did someone come in so you can take that break, or did you just walk out the intersection with no control?

Martinez: Most of the time somebody else was there, but I recall one instance I really, really had to use the restroom; and I left the intersection without anyone. But other than that, there was always somebody there, if not me. We would have somebody else come and help me. We would have the water next to us, sandwiches with whatever or small food or anything that would not spoil, the heat was very hot out there.

Quintairos: Was the flow of traffic smooth at the intersection or did traffic tend to build up?

Martinez: Traffic definitely did build up a lot. I mean it was pretty hard, a lot of people in the streets. I felt that most of the people in the streets should not have been in the streets; because they were not solving problems. They were just causing more problems. A lot of people just wanted to see what had or what was going on in the community. Just roaming around the streets, just doing absolutely nothing. And I thought that was ridiculous. And I mean they would also cause other problems. So there was definitely a lot more traffic than there should have been.

Quintairos: Were the drivers cooperative with your traffic signals?

Martinez: At first they weren’t very cooperative due to the fact that I look young, I’m a civilian, all I was wearing was the fluorescent jacket that the Red Cross had given me to identify me from the rest of the civilians that were in the streets. They really didn’t want to cooperate to much, I mean not a sense of being rude or anything like that, but a lot of times they wouldn’t respect my calls, like if I would ask somebody to stop, a lot of times they would either keep on or they would just make a comment to me or something like that. But after a while they would finely calm down. They realized that with my help, they would get through the intersection a lot quicker. And if they cooperated with me I would definitely cooperate with them. It would just make things easier for one another.

Quintairos: So do you feel that uncooperativeness was due to you not being a police officer?

Martinez: I think in all situations in the day, I really didn’t have the power to tell certain individual people in cars not to do certain things because I was just like one of them. I was hoping they would respect me has an individual and as a person that was trying to help them. But if I was a police officer, I think they would have respected me more. Just because of the mere fact that I had a badge, I had the authority to give a ticket, just in their own mine, I had the authority to arrest them if quote-unquote “they did something that was so illegal that it had to be done”, in that aspect. But all together I think they ended up respecting me, and it really, it was good.

Quintairos: Was there anytime that you felt that during the day, there was more traffic during one time then another, and maybe that possibly you should have been there at that time instead of when there was no traffic?

Martinez: Well what I did, I worked between the hours of nine and three in the morning. I felt that traffic was pretty bad getting close to lunch time, around noon possibly, I don’t know. At least in my intersection, the flow of traffic was heavier then at later times. So I think it definitely had to with the time of day. I think in the earlier times, the reason why there was heavy traffic, was because a lot of people were roaming the streets. As for later times, the traffic that was there, was people who were coming home from their jobs or other places that had to have work done, from the north, people just coming from other places, which were people were going to help; but traffic wasn’t as bad. I think also traffic was bad towards the earlier afternoon getting dark already, that was something that I noticed, I mean I wasn’t there to help in the intersection, but I mean as I crossed the intersection at that time, I noticed a lot more people there, also due to the curfew. There was less traffic, but around seven o’clock, curfew I believe was at nine, so at seven o’clock I saw there were a lot of cars still in the street, which I believe shouldn’t have been done, but there is nothing I really could do about it.

Quintairos: Did you have any bad experiences while volunteering?

Martinez: Well experiences in itself I really didn’t have too many bad ones, the only one that I recall, that wasn’t really pleasant, was this one individual who I asked not to make a left turn, and the guy proceeded to make a left turn not abiding by my responses, and I had to like move out of the way because the guy was coming like towards me, but that was about the only bad experience that I had to deal with. Other than that, after the people had calm down and they were respecting my calls, they respected just my authoritative figure, there trying to help each other out, I really didn’t have any bad times with people.

Quintairos: Do you think because of that experience your life was in danger?

Martinez: Well maybe not in danger because I had, luckily I had, enough time to get away from the pickup. But it was just distressing to think that people would do something like that. If I’m trying to help them and they’re going to hurt me, I mean not that they would want to hurt me in the first place, but just the fact that they did it, when I had already asked them not to do it. I could have been in danger if I had stayed in the way, but I moved out of the way, and I was lucky.

Quintairos: Did you have any experience that made you proud of volunteering for the community?

Martinez: Yes I did have a few experiences that made me really proud. A lot of instances, I had people slow down next to me and tell me that they were really proud that I was volunteering, and that without me there, it would be a lot worse for them to cross the intersection. And that made me really proud. I also had this one incident when this one lady actually parked, and she gave me a bottle of water to drink ‘cause I had runned out of my water, and I don’t know how she even saw it, but she just came and gave me some water. I was really, really proud of that lady, I mean it just made me really happy to be helping the community at that point. It made me really proud.

Quintairos: What do you think the general attitude of the drivers were?

Martinez: Well at first the general attitude was pretty much concern with themselves. They wanted to get to their point of destination as quick as possible. They really didn’t even care too much about anybody else, that was about the first two days. Maybe after those two days that everybody settled down, people realized that this was going to be for a long time, if we don’t help each other, we are just going to hurt each other. So after those first two days, I think people started being nicer to one another. People were respecting one another, people were actually letting people get in front of them, making lefts with out any problems, rights, I felt pretty confident of people. I felt pretty proud of them.

Quintairos: How many days did it take for them to fix the traffic signal before you stopped volunteering at the intersection?

Martinez: Well I stopped volunteering at the intersection after approximately a week, or maybe a little bit less than a week. Even though traffic lights were still not working, I had to stop because I had to go back to my own work, but at least the intersection didn’t come on to approximately a good two weeks, two and a half weeks, they didn’t have any traffic light there. But after I left, somebody else came for another approximately week or so, cause for a couple of days, we didn’t have anybody there because we didn’t have any volunteers or we had people who had to attend to other things that were a little more important than that. But that’s pretty much how long I worked there.

Quintairos: Is there anything else you would like to tell us that we haven’t asked you?

Martinez: All together I could say that I definitely learned a lot from these experiences, I’ve grown as an individual but I think we all have grown as a community. Also I feel really proud to say that I think we’ve shown our integrity, that we have shown how a community can come together in a time of need, in a time that people are really better. That people are really suffering because people are not just suffering economic losses due to their houses, but they suffered as well mentally and psychologically, and people actually lost their lives, and that was really distressing. I was really lucky I didn’t lose a member of my family. Nothing much happened to my house. My friends and my relatives are all okay. Overall, I must say, that rebuilding Miami is a task that is going to take us some time, and I hope that the same spirit of achieve and the same spirit of help continues throughout these months, and probably years before we actually rebuild Miami. And I’m really proud of everybody else. Thank you.