From the L.A. Riots to a Category 5 Hurricane that leveled Miami, the Summer of 1992
I remember watching the Los Angeles riots on television like most Americans in shock while seeing mass destruction and violence over the…
From the L.A. Riots to a Category 5 Hurricane that leveled Miami, the Summer of 1992
Photo by Juliana Uribbe on Unsplash
I remember watching the Los Angeles riots on television like most Americans in shock while seeing mass destruction and violence over the acquittal of four L.A.P.D. officers who were charged in the brutal beating of Rodney King in March 1991.
Unbeknownst to the officers, the relentless beating with batons and kicks was being video recorded by a bystander. A mostly white jury later acquitted the officers in Simi Valley of excessive force charges on April 29, 1992. Within hours of the verdict, violence erupted in South Central L.A. Rival gangs even joined forces in looting and fighting the police.
It took six days to restore order in Los Angeles with the assistance of the California National Guard and U.S. military. The riots resulted from years of deep-seated issues in the black L.A. communities who viewed the police as an occupying force using excessive tactics against them. The riots also exposed ethnic and racial tension between blacks, Hispanics and Koreans in the communities.
The L.A. riots resulted in over $ 1 billion in property damage, over 1,000 buildings destroyed, over 10,000 arrested, over 60 killed and thousands injured in six days. The riots forced L.A.P.D. to reform their police tactics in the aftermath. Thirty plus years after the Rodney King riots, things are still volatile with race relations and policing. Gangs and violence rule parts of L.A. with many forgetting or not caring what happened during those six days in Los Angeles in 1992 turning the City of Angels to the City of Hell.
L.A. has never been the same after the 1992 riots, and many suspect this is the new reality for large American cities that are gang and drug infested.
Soon after the riots, I finished my junior year in college and was working in that summer in Miami. The L.A. riots shocked most Americans, and I thought that would be the worst part of that summer. I was wrong. A few months later, Hurricane Andrew rocked South Florida as a category five hurricane devastating the area. It was a quiet hurricane season, and I did not expect much to happen in August before I returned to Saint Leo College, north of Tampa. Hurricane Andrew made landfall on August 24th at night. My family and I rode out the storm in our house in the Kendall area. I remember losing power early in the evening and then feeling the wrath of Andrew.
I could hear the garage door being sucked in and out by the hurricane force winds while windows were being broken by flying debris. The worse of the storm passed through Homestead and Florida City while leveling an Air Force base in the area. It was an intense night with no power while the storm winds were howling all evening like a loud freight train. When the storm finally passed in the morning, I witnessed complete devastation for miles and miles. The winds exceeded 165 mph and destroyed over 125,000 homes, schools and businesses.
There was no electricity for months with over a million without power. There were communities like Country Walk that suffered massive destruction with homes completely leveled. It was a miracle that only 65 people were killed during the storm. The storm continued through the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall as a category 3 in Morgan City, Louisiana.
At the time, Hurricane Andrew was the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history and would be surpassed later by Katrina and others. I’ll never forget how family, friends and neighbors came together to help one another in a time of need. This was a crisis like no other and could have been much worse if Andrew would have come across downtown Miami with all its force. A few weeks later, I returned to college to finish my senior year knowing I survived one of the strongest hurricanes to ever hit the United States.
The summer 1992 was one to remember that ended the year with a huge political upset seeing an unknown governor from Arkansas named Bill Clinton beat the U.S. incumbent president George H.W. Bush. It was also the first presidential election that I was eligible to vote in. I graduated from Saint Leo College the following year and started my career in federal law enforcement a few years later. Those events had an enormous impact on the nineties, and the country moving forward.
* You can also read other short books by retired ATF Special Agent / Author Ignacio J. Esteban about organized crime dealing with the Mexican drug cartels, street gangs, prison gangs, the Mafia and the One percenters- violent biker gangs. All books are available on Amazon and are free for Kindle Unlimited Subscribers including his autobiography ATF UNDERCOVER detailing his dangerous undercover cases with repeat violent offenders, gang members, international firearms traffickers, armed drug dealers and so much more. He also does a weekly show with reality TV star William Steel from Inmate to Roommate on A & E available on different social media platforms.
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