Interview with Melinda Smith (Video Specialist) conducted by Bob Warzeski on October 29, 1992 at her home in Coconut Grove, FL. Hurricane Andrew - Remains of a furniture warehouse west of Whispering Pines. Courtesy National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Adminstration Photo Library:

Interview with Melinda Smith, video specialist with American Bankers Trust, and a neighbor of mine, on October 29, 1992, at her home in Coconut Grove.

Warzeski: The interview subject is Melinda Smith, graphic artist working for American Bankers Trust Insurance.

Smith: I'm not an artist.

Warzeski: OK, you are a ...

Smith: An AV specialist. Big difference, especially when I sit down at the computer and try to create something!

Warzeski: When did you first realize that the hurricane might hit Miami?

Smith: About six o'clock Saturday night. I was in Naples on a long weekend, staying with friends, and we were out all day because my friend's son was celebrating his eleventh birthday. So I had gone to help with the birthday party. And we happened to turn on the news, and actually my friend's mother had called and said “Melinda, you ought to be aware of this.” So I stood in front of the TV and watched it and said “I'm going home.” I got kind of ... not scared, but uncomfortable?

Warzeski: Anxious?

Smith: Anxious. Anxious is the word. But I was smart and went to KMart and got all the things I needed there. And it was empty.

Warzeski:  Already?

Smith: No, the store was empty. Had plenty of everything. But it wasn't mobbed at all. And I went to Publix and got all my food. There was no problem of things not making the ride home, because they were going to sit out for a week anyhow, right? So I was real glad I did all my shopping there, and I didn't get home until about one o'clock in the morning.

Warzeski:  You've already described some of the preparations you made. What else did you do?

Smith: Well, I helped Frank (the apartment manager) around here. I put all my plants down, moved the table on the porch into the corner, brought the bird inside. Took the hanging stuff outside in. I filled my boat. I didn't fill it, but I put quite a bit of water in it. The reasoning behind that was to keep it from blowing away. Which was a good idea, but after being down in south Dade and seeing twenty five foot fiberglass boats in the median, that were still attached to their trailers, that was sort of a ridiculous idea. For a small hurricane, that would have been fine, but not for what I saw down there. And then I helped Frank as far as just cleaning up, putting stuff away. Because there are a lot of plants around, so we put them on the porch. That sort of stuff, to keep things from blowing away. We had shutters for the sliding glass doors for my apartment and his, and put them up. I was very uncomfortable with the fact that the rest of the windows were not covered. But being just a tenant, I don't really have any say in ... I mean he's the manager of the apartments, and he does what ... And I knew there was the danger of windows breaking. However, I had no idea what could happen: the domino effect that happens.

Warzeski: What did you expect that the storm would be like?

Smith: I expected to be able to sleep through it, because I was able to sleep through every other one.

Warzeski: What other ones have you been through?

Smith: It's difficult to remember all their names.

Warzeski: How many years back?

Smith: Well, I grew up in south Louisiana. I think '64, '65 and '66 were hurricane years.

Warzeski: '65 was Betsy.

Smith: OK, so I lived through Betsy. I lived through ... I want to say ... Camille?

Warzeski: I think that was a good year before or after Betsy.

Smith: And I want to say Donna. But I may be wrong.

Warzeski: Donna headed in that direction, but I don't really recall where it went from Florida.

Smith: I don't really recall the names. But I've lived through ... I know them by which trees in the yard were there, that are no longer there. So I have seen considerable damage. Considerable damage, but nothing like what I saw from Andrew. As far as trees down, and trees fallen on houses and stuff like that. I've never had a real fear of hurricanes. As a child, I'd watch my parents get prepared, and then, to me, I perceived them to be calm and relaxed. With the attitude that we've done everything that we can do, so there's no use worrying about it. And they never boarded any windows. Never boarded any windows.

Warzeski: Where in Louisiana were you?

Smith: In Lafayette, which is about. ..

Warzeski: You're well inland. If they were on the coast, it might have been a different story.

Smith: OK. Anyway, living through those hurricanes there was not a whole lot of fear. And mostly I slept through them. And I lived through David, which was hardly a strong wind. I slept through David. Again, I had a couple of friends staying with me who were hurricane novices. And they were in the other room talking and getting scared, keeping me awake! So I had the attitude of ... you do what you're supposed to do, and then you don't worry about it. And I pretty much had that attitude until about two o'clock.

Warzeski: You were here?

Smith: Uh huh. With two friends. And then about two o'clock is when the power went out. And the wind really started picking up. What changed that was the sounds. Mostly the stuff hitting the windows. So now there's fear and a lot healthier respect! I've always had a healthy respect for hurricanes, because I've seen the damage. I never, ever had the attitude ... I've lived in Florida now for almost fifteen years, and I've never had the attitude about hurricanes that it's like, “Oh, it's no big deal.” Because I knew it was. But ... when I own my own home, I will make a lot more precautions than what were done here. Even though we boarded the sliding glass door, the metal piece that goes across the window, that the shutters fit up under, was pulled from the wall. It was held in three places, and it was pulled out in two. So of course, all those shutters are just on the ground. With that thing dangling and hitting the window.

Warzeski:  So that was probably some of the sounds you were hearing during the night.

Smith: Right. And some of the sounds ... it's interesting, some of the sounds that I heard ... I think it was the top of this tree going down. I thought it was the wind blowing stuff around on my porch. I had no idea that it was the top of a tree coming down!

Warzeski: Who was here with you?

Smith: My friend Jerry, and Liz.

Warzeski: You said that they were first timers?

Smith: Jerry, I think, has lived through a couple. Because he's lived in Florida for quite awhile. And then Liz, I don't think has ever gone through a hurricane. She's an upstate New York native, and she's been down here since the mid seventies. She's from Schenectady.

Warzeski: Were you afraid of the place blowing in? What were your thoughts during the storm?

Smith: Well, my … what I explained to Jerry and Liz, the worst thing that could happen would be a tree would fall on the house. In fact, Jerry and I walked around before Liz got here, and we looked at the trees. And we said, “We know the wind's going to be coming this way, so if the trees fall, they're going to go that way.” We also looked at where our cars were parked, and where that big dead tree was out there. And Jerry's inclination was, that tree's not going anywhere. For a couple of reasons. One, its limbs were very, very big and it's dead, there was nothing there to ... the wind would just go by it. No limbs or anything to grab the wind. So we're talking about it as far as deciding where to park the cars and that sort of stuff. It never occurred to me that that huge oak would go down.

Warzeski:  And the Fichus, and the ...

Smith: Yeah.

Warzeski: In the middle of the night, what was the worst point?

Smith: Between four and five, when the wind was just blowing so hard. Stuff was hitting the windows. I think it was around two, I had gotten up and came out to the living room. That was about when the power went out, one thirty or two. We talked a little bit, and then I went back to bed and tried to sleep and couldn't, because the noise was so bad. Because those windows face the East. So that was getting the brunt ... not the brunt, but that was where stuff was hitting the windows. It was around four, I guess, I got up and came into the living room. All three of us were in the living room. And Jerry had the radio on, listening to Brian Norcross. And I asked him to turn it down or turn it off, because I didn't want to hear it. Because listening to all that stuff only made me more nervous. And I had enough nervousness of my own! And Liz paced. We moved the couch out from underneath the window because Jerry was sleeping on the couch. And if something should hit the windows and break them, I didn't want the glass to fall in on him. So we moved it into the middle of the room. So it was a nice straight shot for Liz to pace, from the kitchen to the door! Right here at the porch. Back and forth, back and forth. So she paced, I laid on the love seat, and Jerry was on the couch. And Jerry in fact tried to get us ... he wanted to do trivia questions and get our minds off of what was going on. Tried to make us laugh and that sort of stuff.

Warzeski: Did it work?

Smith: Umm ... No. (laughter) At about five o'clock, the phone rang, which blew me away. I picked it up and answered the phone. “Well, the phone works!” And it was my friends in Naples, who were just about finishing boarding their house up. They just wanted to see how we were doing. And that was the first time I admitted out loud that I was scared. I didn't want to admit to myself that I was scared. Because I really felt like being this hurricane ...

Warzeski: Veteran?

Smith: Yes .... that I needed to be calm for them. Because both Jerry and Liz can be quite anxious at times ... under normal circumstances. Highstrung is not really a good word, but anxious. I think they've both in the past suffered from anxiety attacks. So I was concerned about that. I was concerned about hiding my fear. So that they not get too weird. So I did admit to my friend when she called that I was scared. And that was about five o'clock. And about five thirty, I guess is when we got into the wine. And Jerry, who normally doesn't even drink, had a little wine. I had a couple of glasses, and it was enough to relax me so that I could go to sleep. Liz pulled my sleeping bag out and put it in the hallway, by the bathroom, which was the safest place in the house. She curled up in that and went to sleep. I woke up around six thirty, I think, and the wind had gone down a little. I woke her up to get her to come to the bed so she wouldn't be sleeping on the floor. And Frank woke us up around eight.

Warzeski: What did you do right after the storm?

Smith: Right after?

Warzeski: The wind has died down, it's safe to poke your nose out.

Smith: It was about eight o'clock, and Jerry was in the living room, and he hollered to me, “Melinda, somebody's calling you.” And it was Frank, standing on his porch calling me. I didn't even put shoes on. He called me, and I got outside. I couldn't get out the porch door because the tree was there. I went out the front door, and we climbed, through the oak tree to get to the street. And we walked from one end of the street to the other. The wind was still blowing pretty hard, and stuff was blowing around. I decided, “This is not safe to be out here.” We came back in and got dressed and looked out the windows. Around ten or eleven, we went out and started cutting a pathway to the street. And then around noon or one, Liz and I took off and went for a walk. We tried to walk to downtown (Coconut Grove), and the National Guard would not let us into the Grove. So we walked past the Mayfair and then down into Dinner Key. And I had my camera. I shot quite a bit of stuff, and saw where the storm surge ended up on Mary Street there. And was pretty blown away by the way that the boats had been tousled around. At this time I still didn't have any idea how bad things were in south Dade.

Warzeski:  When you looked outside and saw what was there, what was the first thing that you thought?

Smith:: Holy shit! Oh my god!

Warzeski: Did you basically think about what's right here rather than the whole picture of what Miami might look like after this?

Smith: I don't know when I started thinking of outside my little world.

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

Smith: (Long pause) One of the most difficult weeks I've ever gone through. That week ... well, the first couple of days were just spent cleaning up around here, just to be able to get out of the neighborhood. Then that Wednesday, I think was the hardest day, because that Wednesday we were supposed to go back to work. So Monday afternoon, after we walked around a little bit, was spent cleaning up. Tuesday was spent, all day, cleaning up. Wednesday I went back to work. And that's when I drove into disaster land.

Warzeski: When did you first hear about what had happened to the building you worked in?

Smith: That was Monday night. My direct boss, he lives in Broward, and we had been in direct contact quite often through all this. He had tried to get in touch with his boss, and her phone was out of order. She lives close to me, so he either asked or I offered to go down to find her. That was Monday night. We found a way out of the neighborhood and I tried to go back roads, avoiding Dixie Highway, to get to her house, and couldn't. What should take about ten minutes ended up taking about forty five. Just to get to south Grove. She was not there when I got there. I talked with one of her neighbors, who ... he had said the building was trashed. As I was pulling out of her street, she was just pulling in. She came and talked to me and said that she had just come from there, and that the building was a pile of glass and computers. So I had envisioned just a pile of rubble. No standing walls at all. And thought, you know, there's ... I don't have a job. I think it was on Tuesday that my boss, when my boss and I talked, that it became more apparent that... no, she (Melinda's boss's boss) told me Monday night. She said that we'll get together down there later in the week, and “You may not be doing what you'd normally be doing but... you'll be working.”

Warzeski:  That was a big relief.

Smith: Yeah, but it wasn't like the relief like it was Wednesday, when we stood there around the Chairman. It must have been about two or three hundred of us that had managed to make it in, and...

Warzeski: Out of how many?

Smith: I think there was over a thousand. Eleven hundred employees, I think, in the building. And he said “Don't worry.” Tuesday was our normal payday. He says “those of you that have direct deposit, your paychecks are deposited. Those of you whose checks are mailed, we have them over here on the patio. However you were paid for the last two weeks, the last pay period, you will continue to be paid until we have a system set up that we can change it. You won't be doing your normal job, but you all have jobs.” So that Wednesday was a very emotional day, driving down and seeing the destruction; at this time having still not seen any kind of TV, and to see houses with no roofs, or ... rafters. To see exposed rafters and to see them toppled like dominoes. I cried on the way to work. Because I was very, very emotionally shaken by that. I was blown away when I got to the property and saw the building, and all the missing windows, and all this beautiful landscaping that had been around, just to the ground. I was, I think, just cold inside, it was in a lot of cases numb. I went from being emotional and able to cry to ... numb. And then slowly people started showing up .. . and the warmth that I found was surprising. There were people that I hardly knew that came up and hugged me, or that I hugged. And people that normally didn't talk to me that came over and said, “How did you do?”, and “Are you OK” and that sort of stuff. Now, my best friend works there too, and I had not been able to get in touch with her. I didn't even know if she ... if she was alive. I think I had heard that Country Walk had been hit pretty bad, and she lives in Country Walk. When I saw her, I just ran to her. Because, like I said, I didn't even know that she was alive. So I was real, real glad to see her. But ... she had lost everything. And she started to cry. So we had our little departmental meetings, and we talked, and it was very vague, we didn't really know what we were going to do. And we were given specific plans on “how are you going to get things done? What are your plans for the next three weeks, the next three months.” It was more, sort of just planning stuff. My boss had been upstairs and had seen that most of our equipment was fine. Of course this was that Wednesday, before all the rain. Everything was OK, I think. I do recall thinking Monday or Tuesday night, before I saw the building, that I had brought in some heirlooms, things that had belonged to my grandmother, that we were going to use as props for a photo shoot. And they were in the studio. And before I knew that the things in the studio was OK, about three in the morning, when I was having trouble sleeping, I just woke up and thought, “Holy shit”. Because I was more worried about my personal things being gone. But fortunately they were fine and we got them out. It was those kinds of things that would come to me ... about what I possibly had lost. That Wednesday, we worked about a half a day making plans and that sort of stuff. I talked it over with my friend about her house, how she had to get packed and get moved out of there, and her exhusband was getting in the picture and just screwing things up and making an already messy situation for her even messier. I had seen my boss's boss, Bonnie, and I talked to her, and I mentioned that to her. I said “Debbie could really use my help.” And so Bonnie said “fine, get Debbie moved”, because Debbie was a manager and was much more valuable to the company than the little peon that I am. (Chuckle) There were some very important things that Debbie had to handle. So the sooner Debbie was able to come back to work and actually be there, the better, and I could of benefit by helping her. So that afternoon, I went to her house and saw what ... how ... it was like a bomb had gone off ... in Country Walk. You know, driving my car like it was a four wheel drive vehicle. Down the sidewalk, and across the median and down a part of the street for a while, and then up across the sidewalk and back down again. Going around all these trees. And I'd not known Country Walk very well. I've been to Debbie's house numerous times, but I had no inkling how to find her house. Because, like most drivers, I drive by landmarks. I know at this stop sign or whatever, I make a left, and then I know I make the first left past this little, shopping center on the right or whatever. And none of those landmarks were there.

Warzeski: Did you manage to find it?

Smith: Well, she was directing. She had gone with me and was telling me where to turn. Otherwise I would not have found it. Not at all. So, I was ... the whole ... basically, her whole second story was gone.

Warzeski: The walls and everything?

Smith: Yes. The back wall ... everything was gone. The front of the house ... when you looked at the front of the house, the only thing that looked bad was the front door was mangled. It was a metal door. However, once you walked in the front door, it was like a huge skylight, because there was no roof. The roof over her bedroom was intact and the roof over the kitchen/garage/family room area was intact. But the second story was gone, and the cathedral ceiling over the living room was gone.

Warzeski: Where did she end up spending the night?

Smith: She had stayed with her brother in another house. He had considerable damage there as well. He lived about a mile or two west of where American Bankers is, so his house was pretty torn up: trees on the house, limbs coming through the windows. Part of the roof peeling away, that kind of stuff. So she'd had a pretty horrible night anyway. And then the next … on Monday had seen her house and was devastated that it was gone. So the rest of the week was spent ... That Thursday, what ice I had was gone. I think I had tried to stand in line one day for ice, it might have been that Tuesday. I got in line seven o'clock or seven thirty in the morning, and they said there'd be no ice available until noon. And I said screw it, I'm not going to stand in that kind of line. So Thursday I decided I would go to Broward to get ice, and I drove all around Broward, for five hours. I drove around and couldn't find ice. I ended up calling friends, and they had electricity, and so they were happy to give me whatever they had in their freezer. But that wasn't enough to last but a day or two, and I was also trying to get ice for you and for Frank and whoever else. I think Chris and Carlos were gone by that time, but whoever else on the block that I could get it for. And that was a very, very frustrating experience, to spend all that time. I had helped Debbie in the morning, and then in the afternoon I went up to Broward. And it was horrible driving without traffic lights. Traffic was just much, much heavier than normal; and it was just a very, very frustrating experience altogether. Had I known at that time that the survivor guilt was as strong as it was in Broward, I'd have hit the restaurants, or the hotels, and played the victim role. Had I known that the survivor guilt was as bad as it was. But I didn't know.

Warzeski: Let's talk about that in a few minutes.

Smith: OK

Warzeski: How has your actual work been affected by the storm? I know that the company had to move downtown. How did that affect what your daytoday routine is?

Smith: My whole routine is completely changed. The thing that I miss most is that I'm not really doing anything creative. Before, I was creating slides, I was creating shows, I was editing video: that kind of stuff. And I haven't done any of that.

Warzeski: Is it not going to happen, or is it just that that's not what's happening right now?

Smith: Well, for the longest time, the equipment was just not there. My coworker was cleaning it at his home and then slowly bringing a little bit of it in. It took a good three or four weeks to get electricity, because we require a great deal of power to run all this equipment. We had, at one count, forty seven devices to plug in. And that was probably a very conservative estimate. It was probably more like sixty. So we had, I think, four outlets in the room we were in. They didn't want to give us power.

Warzeski: Who is “they”.

Smith: The building management, I guess. I'm not real sure who was involved. There's this one guy that was brought in that's a friend of the chairman that's been the coordinator of everything. He coordinates what our needs are with Winthrop, the management of International Place. The electrician told us ... we told him we needed four 320 amp circuits. And he said you can have one if you share it with others. And we said, no, no, that won't do! So finally they ended up having to drill holes through the concrete floor to bring us in power. We didn't really know what worked and what didn't work until we got it all hooked up. It was at some point determined that the hard drive on my computer had died. Its a 486 with a 200 meg hard drive. Fortunately, I had backed it up at the end of July, and had done a complete back up. So I really only lost one job. But I didn't really know if my backup was going to work, either, because I had never restored anything before. So we really didn't know ... in fact right now, we're having some problems with the editing system. We don't know if it's softwarerelated or hardwarerelated. I'm still having problems with my computer. I had the hard drive replaced, and that works, and my backup worked fine. But one of the boards that communicates with the camera that prints the slides is not working, and we're really not sure where the problem is. Our consultant is involved in all this as well. So I'm still not creating anything on the computer.

Warzeski: It sounds like there's the prospect of that happening in the nottoodistant future, though.

Smith: Oh sure, sure. But as a creative person, I need to be creatively challenged, and I haven't been. So that's been a depressing type of situation. You can't find anything. Because wherever things were before, God knows where they are now. Having to deal with not knowing where people are. Having to deal with elevators. I mean, we used to be in a six story building, and I could always take the stairs one or two floors. No big deal. But you can't take the stairs in this building at all, because the doors to the stairwell will lock once you go into the stairwell. You can't just go one floor, because the stairwell door's locked. You can't get out. It's for security reasons, I don't know. So to go one floor, you have to take an elevator. And because the building is so big, there are four or five banks of elevators. I'm on 30, and if I want to go to 17, I have to go down to 11, the sky lobby, and then over to another set of elevators and then up. And if I want to go to 47, I have to ... fortunately, there's a set of stairs in the lobby from 30 to 31, so I can take the other bank. But I take it up to 44 and then get off and take another elevator up to 47. Then there's the freight elevator, in which you have 37 floors of people trying to use this one freight elevator, which is ridiculous. People have waited as much as 30 minutes for an elevator. Things like the mail, which used to be delivered on the hour is now days. It's a joke. A FAX that was sent to me at one point: I was expecting to get it within hours of it being sent, and it came the day after because of the way the mail was delivered. So that was frustrating. I didn't have a phone for a long time. Because of the electricity problem, we didn't know if we were going to stay there, or move to our printing plant in Hialeah, which ... part of the company is there. I also miss the gym. I had a real comfortable workout schedule with the gym and the vitacourse on the property. That's gone too. That was a very good stressrelief, as well as weight management. That's gone and I miss it tremendously. I've been trying to look at it as a positive. It's fun to learn downtown. It's kind of nice not having to have to drive, just five minutes to the metrorail station. That sort of stuff. But I miss my old routine. It was a relaxing drive, which it probably won't be for another couple of years. Or it may never be again. I don't know. Now that the traffic patterns have changed.

Warzeski: Are they going to rebuild on the same site?

Smith: The building? The building was not a pile of rubble. It was just mostly windows blown out. And therefore everything inside basically trashed. So what they've done is gutted it. There was no structural damage: it was gutted. They're taking everything out. They're replacing it with a different kind of ceiling tile, from what I understand, that can be soaked in water for thirty days and still not disintegrate. Because that was one of the big problems we had. That weekend, after we had all that rain, we had “ceiling tile mud”, everywhere. And that's really what did most of the damage to the equipment, was the ceiling tiles falling on the equipment, and then the rain.

Warzeski: That's a good phrase. Ceiling tile mud.

Smith: It was!

Warzeski: I've made it's acquaintance!

Smith: That's what it was. Remind me and I'll show you a brochure that the company has put out and my photography that's in it. Because I did do quite a bit.

Warzeski: About ... ?

Smith: Andrew. It's a brochure to go to our accounts and prospects to tell them what happened, and what we've done to overcome it.

Warzeski: So you've been able to contribute something toward helping the company rebuild, even though you've ...

Smith: Oh, certainly. I've photographed, and ... that was interesting, because I did do some photography, which I don't normally do a lot of. And I do enjoy it. So that was a couple of days that I was able to do something creative. But for the most part, I've just been sitting at my desk and handling things. I've been so busy that I haven't even determined which of my CD's that we lease ... which ones work and which ones don't work. Because when I opened them out of the package, the CD was stuck to the cardboard insert. And when I pull them apart, part of the cardboard was still there. And sometimes they play with the cardboard on it!

Warzeski: I remember you mentioning to me that your company had some things they wanted to accomplish in terms of the way that their clients viewed them after the storm, and then the community, and so on.

Smith: Oh, that's right. It was to assure customer confidence, employee loyalty, ... I forget what it was now ... the employees' loyal to the company, and safety. That was the most important thing, and the second thing was customer confidence.

Warzeski: You've talked about this brochure. What else is going on?

Smith: This is amazing. My boss produced a video about the storm, showing the building and the damage. There were two of our employees who were on Inside Edition. I think that aired the Tuesday night after the storm. And what had happened to them. Two other employees were with them, so actually there were four employees plus four kids, I think, in the storm at their house. And being in the house and then going into a closet, and having a mattress on top of them, and then going from that to the car in the garage. And that's how they rode out the storm as the house was disintegrating around them. Anyway, then the move, getting all set up.

Warzeski: This was to go out to clients?

Smith: Yes, this also. Surprisingly, the Chairman made it available to the employees to buy.

Warzeski: Why is that surprising?

Smith: Because he didn't say anything to us about it first. The video was finished on a Monday. The Chairman came back in town and saw it on Tuesday. He had what he calls a Chairman's Forum, where he sits and answers questions for an hour. And he does this quite often anyway. So he had it set up in the auditorium for two different times, and he wanted us to show it to them. At the end of the first time, he said “if Y'all want to buy it, it's ... how much is it Bill?” And Bill said “three dollars”. He's trying to remember how much it's going to cost to get this duplicated. He says “and if you want one, just call Bill.” Well, we've been inundated. We ordered 300 the first time, and sold out within hours. We ordered another 300 and, actually we disseminated about 100 of those, that went to the Board of Directors, and to some accounts, and people who wanted them for business purposes. But about 500 hundred have been sold like that! (snaps fingers) And I today just ordered 500 more. We've been inundated with phone calls, I can hardly get any work done for people calling about it. “I ordered a video tape.” The videos were supposed to be on sale for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of last week. They were sold out in a couple of hours on Wednesday. And people were actually coming into the room, and Bill was afraid he was going to get beaten up by these three women that had come in. “We ordered them, and why didn't you save us some?” They were irate. People had actually gotten irate because they couldn't get the video.

Warzeski: That brings up another question. How has the aftermath of the storm ... you know, we've been hearing all this stuff on TV about how posthurricane stress is going to affect everybody. How has that been affecting the people in your shop?

Smith: Harder to concentrate. Mostly because I think they have so many other things going on in their mind. Especially at the very beginning, people were like “where am I going to put my kids?” Because we had two childcare facilities onsite as well as an elementary school: kindergarten, first and second grade. Then these parents are like “where am I going to put my kids?” It was obviously very convenient: the kids just ride to work, you drop them off, you go inside. You pick them up, and then you walk to the car and go home. So now they're trying to make other arrangements for the kids, trying to get in to work. I mean, people who are still living down in disaster land, in either homes that are somewhat livable or living in travel trailers that are the size of this porch.

Warzeski: Did you actually have any of your people in the tent camps?

Smith: I don't think so. But they figure about four hundred of our original thousand people were homeless. And we lost about three hundred people, I think. A lot of women, their husbands were Air Force from Homestead Air Force Base. So when they were transferred, they [the women] were gone. There are a lot of people that just said “I'm getting out of here. I'm not hanging around for this.” And left. And it's been dealing with people you haven't seen for awhile, it's like “How are you doing, what happened to you, are you OK, how did you do?” And then people are just having a real difficult time getting to work. A woman whose house was blown away they just bought a house in Tavernier. So can you imagine driving from Tavernier to downtown? So she leaves her house a quarter to six and gets to work at seven thirty.

Warzeski: Are there any signs of increased domestic problems, things like that?

Smith: Yes! I did see some flowers on a woman's desk. I said “those are pretty, what are these for? Is it a special occasion or are these doghouse flowers?” She said “they're doghouse flowers. We're living in this little travel trailer, the four of us. And, we had a fight.” He works there too, and he had sent flowers to her, a couple dozen roses. Beautiful. To make up.

Warzeski: That's cute. That's a lot better than some of the other domestic problems we've been hearing about.

Smith: I just know that everything has been a lot more strained ... the children affected quite a bit, and the parents dealing with that. We've lost quite a few people who've just quit. Or not quit, given notice and left, because their children are just too important. For instance, there are people who are still living down there and are using our daycare center. They're dropping their kids off at seven in the morning, and they're picking them up at six o'clock at night. And that's just too long a day.

Warzeski: The daycare center down there is still functioning?

Smith: We had one in the building and one offsite, on the property, and the one that's not owned by American Bankers has absorbed all the kids that they can from the other one. So they are able ... the company's running a bus from the headquarters. So people are still parking at the headquarters, dropping the kids off. The elementary school is still going, because there was minor damage there. Then they hop on the bus and ride to Dadeland North to make it to work for eight. And then have to leave at five to get down there to pick up the kids at six. And it's just too much for the kids. It's just too long of a day, when they normally were being dropped off at quarter to eight and picked up at five fifteen. And a lot of times the parents would visit with the kids during the day. Sometimes have lunch with them, go see them on their break, whatever. And for some of the younger kids, it was too much. And the parents said: “My kids are too important.” And have quit, or resigned.

Warzeski: Are they moving away from Florida, or ...

Smith: No, staying here. And it's not just low level employees. There's one woman, that was a director (of videos). She was like Bonnie's right hand person. And she quit. She had three kids, and she said I can't handle what it's doing to the kids. So we've lost a lot of people that way.

Warzeski: Are there any positive outcomes that you see from the hurricane?

Smith: (Long pause) Yes, people are a lot more open and talkative, and, I think, accepting. Some of the barriers that were there before were torn down, sort of like we all had a common denominator. No matter who you were, what nationality, what socioeconomic level you were at. They were all homeless.

Warzeski: You had told me that the president of the company, or the director, actually spent the night in the building during the storm.

Smith: The vice chairman, uh huh. He had spent the night in the building, in a stairwell. I think I told you the story of one of the maintenance guys. They went from one place in the building to another place, to another place, to another place. And they were hearing things like, what they'd come to find out was the air conditioning being sucked off the top of the roof, and the rain coming in, and everything like that. This huge piece of sculpture, they had it tied down, and it was still .... I mean they had to put it in with a crane! And they had tied it down and it still got moved off and pushed into the building. The thing that I thought was so interesting was, here he was telling this in a less emotional tone than I'm talking in now, and he had his gloves in his hand, his work gloves, and he was just twisting the gloves in his hands. So I could tell that there was emotion, that he had been very scared, by the way he was ... (trails off) So at the very beginning, people were much more caring, and interested about each other than we ever would have been before.

Warzeski: Is there any of that hanging on, or is it all fading?

Smith: I think it is (lasting). No, I think it is. We were also blown away that, that first day that we went down to work, we had found out the reaction of our customers, our accounts. And we found out that one of our accounts in Texas had already set up a charitable trust for us, for the employees who needed help. So that really surprised us. Here we were expecting our accounts to be not very understanding, that ...

Warzeski: Maybe lose accounts?

Smith: Yes. Have them lose confidence in us and pull their business. Whereas they were very, very understanding, and very supportive. In fact, we've had numerous accounts sign on since the storm.

Warzeski: That's interesting. Is there a correlation?

Smith: Um, I guess it just shows the confidence that they have in us, and that the ability that we've been able to go from a bombed out building to up and running within four weeks. I don't think that it's ever happened that there has been an insurance company that had a major disaster and was still paying claims at the same time. And I understand that there is a University of Miami professor who is using us as a case study. I think probably a longterm disaster plan. Because we had a disaster plan.

Warzeski:  Did his study start before the hurricane?

Smith: No, I don't think so. Just since then. Because evidently there's such strong numbers. In fact one of our employees who works in our sales center in Atlanta is doing his MBA. And he's doing a case study on the company, and has done some research. And he's rattling off these numbers: about thirty percent of all companies that suffer a major disaster are out of business within one year, and another thirty four percent are out of business within three years. Or maybe his numbers were higher than that. I can't really quote you the numbers, exactly. But they seemed significant. And it was surprising that, here we are, we're hurting in a lot of ways, but we're still in business. I mean, we've got premium coming in, and we're paying our bills, and we're still signing on new accounts. I was surprised at some of the major names. It would probably be inappropriate for me to name the names, but we're talking everyday, household names, of accounts or prospects that we're bringing in. And from what I hear from people out in the field, like the sales rep was saying, “We were blown away that you guys were up and running so quick. We're real proud of you.” And we really have found out that the company is not the building, it's the people. And they're some pretty terrific people, because look at what we've accomplished. And senior management adapted the attitude of “No excuses”. In fact there are some Tshirts printed up that said “Stronger than ever”, “No excuses” with the hurricane warning symbol, the flags. So that's the attitude we take. And I can't imagine these people ... I mean, when I was running around photographing and saw people drying out files. I mean files being laid out. And they smelled horrible. They'd give you a headache almost instantly, as soon as you walked around them. How can we still be doing all this, with all this stuff trashed? (laughing) And that was just one of the people that were right up by the windows, that were just ... everything was gone.

Warzeski: You had talked earlier about, ... what did you call it, “something” guilt.

Smith: Survivor guilt.

Warzeski: Survivor guilt. Tell me about survivor guilt.

Smith: Well, these are a lot of the people that live up in Broward. Nothing happened to them. Maybe a couple of trees or stuff like that. And the first few days, they were like ... they were... My boss in particular was bringing me ice, and he went grocery shopping and bought fruits and vegetables for Debbie. He got gasoline for the chairman, and was doing all this running around and getting things for people, just trying to ease their misery. And make things easier. I remember one day he had brought me a jug of ice, water he had frozen for me, and he brought me a beer, too. It was just this feeling of guilt I think that they had. It's like “why them and not me?” And “I've got to do something to make up for this fact that I've been spared.” There was this woman, a new vendor who wanted our business. She was like, “I'm so sorry that that happened.” In fact what had happened was that we had been trying to get a piece of equipment demoed, and the guy she worked with thought that that piece of equipment had been shipped and was in our building. And when he heard, or saw on the news our building, he's like “Oh, there's our projector gone.” And she's like “Forget about the projector, what about all these people?” And she said “Is there anything I can do?” And I said, “Well, yes, there is this one women I know that has lost her home and everything, and has no insurance. And her family needs clothes, and furniture and stuff like that.” And she says “Well I don't know that I can find clothes and things, but we could take up a collection around the office, and a check would do it.” And I said “Yeah.” As it ended up, this young lady that I was trying to help out, her husband was this macho Cuban who couldn't accept any help. And what help I was able to give her, she had to lie to him about. And she refused to take any more help from me because she didn't want to lie to him. And I didn't want to cause conflict. So, I wanted to be able to help more, but if my helping was causing problems in her relationship with her husband, forget it.

Warzeski:  Is there anything else that I haven't asked you about that . ..

Smith: I wish that I could remember what it was that we were told at the very beginning about employee loyalty and customer confidence, whatever it was were the most important things.

Warzeski:  Well, if you could find it out, I'll try to insert it at the right point. Thank you.

Smith: You're welcome.