Kick Ass (35 page)

County Manager Joaquin Avino was in charge of building and zoning when some of the crummiest developments were approved. When an NBC reporter recently asked about those projects, Avino experienced a bout of prime-time amnesia. It was truly pathetic.

Andrew revealed the system for the incestuous charade that it is, and now the guilty parties are scrambling for cover. It’s not our fault, they cry, it’s Nature! Two hundred mile-per-hour winds! The Big One!

The Big Lie is what it is. So much preventable damage, so much unnecessary miseryit’s not the storm of the century, it’s the crime of the century.

Happy ending slow to come at country walk

May 6, 1993

Hi-ho, hi-ho.

It’s off your roof did go.

We don’t care if your house ain’t there.

Hi-ho, hi-ho.

Once upon a time, there were 70 or 80 dwarfs who built a place called the Village Homes of Country Walk.

Some of the dwarfs were good workers, but others weren’t. The bad dwarfs had names like Lazy, Dizzy, Drowsy, Greedy, Clumsy, Careless and Sleazy. They worked for a company called Walt Disney, which had a snow-white reputation.

One summer night, a fierce hurricane came from the sea. It huffed and it puffed and blew lots of houses down. The people of Country Walk were very surprised, for the dwarfs had promised that the condominiums were built solidly and would not fall apart in a strong wind.

After the storm, the residents went through the rubble of Country Walk and discovered many bad things about the way the dwarfs had built the homes. There were masonry walls with no steel bars for reinforcement, and sometimes no cement! There were wooden posts that hadn’t been anchored to the foundations. There were roof trusses that weren’t properly attached.

Country Walk was a disaster area, but it wasn’t the only one. Across the land, people who lost everything in the hurricane were learning terrible facts about how poorly their houses had been constructed. Soon those people hired lawyers, who began to sue.

At first, the home-building companies said they didn’t do anything wrong. They blamed all the damage on the hurricane, which they said was the most powerful storm in the history of the planet! But scientists who studied the hurricane, and engineers who studied the wrecked homes, disputed the builders. They said most damage resulted from cheesy construction.

Facing expensive and embarrassing trials, two companies did something very smart: They caved in, agreeing to give money to those who’d lost their homes in the storm.

A company called Lennar gave $2.4 million to customers in several neighborhoods where houses had disintegrated like match sticks. After deducting legal fees, each owner got about $3,800 from the settlementa bargain for Lennar, which was one of the most profitable developers in the whole United States.

In the place known as Country Walk, a company called Arvida/JMB Partners agreed to give $2.74 million to the owners of 135 condos that were damaged or destroyed by the hurricane. In exchange, the customers promised not to sue Arvida, and thus spared the company months of humiliating public disclosures about the shabby quality of its Country Walk homes.

But one company that didn’t make peace with its customers was Walt Disney, which was more famous for entertaining children than for building condos. Disney had put up 209 units at Country Walk. Many were ruined by the storm that blew in from the sea.

The people in the condos wanted Disney to pay $5.9 million, to make up for the many mistakes made by the bad dwarfs. But the company offered only $2 million, insisting that its homes were nailed together just fine.

So the owners went to court. Suddenly Disney found its snow-white reputation in jeopardy. Several of the bad dwarfs got subpoenaed to testify. Lazy, Clumsy and Careless were the first to snitch.

When Disney’s lawyers read the dwarfs’ depositions, they became very, very worried. They faxed the Country Walk homeowners and offered lots more money to forget the whole thing. The homeowners accepted the deal, put new roofs on their condos and lived nervously ever after.

Especially during hurricane season.

Slow to act? No, state was setting trap for builders

July 29, 1993

This week, the Dade State Attorney’s Office and the lieutenant governor announced an ambitious plan to crack down on crooked builders.

Gee, what’s the big hurry? It’s been only 11 months since the hurricane. South Dade residents have only lost millions of dollars to swindlers, licensed and unlicensed, who have taken the money and left the houses in shambles.

But authorities aren’t waiting for something really serious to happen. They’re leaping into the fray now, four whole weeks before the first anniversary of the storm.

A press conference put out the word. The state attorney is hiring three new prosecutors, an investigator and two secretaries.The state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation is adding a dozen investigators, plus five persons to help take complaints from the public.

Everybody knows the task force that calls itself “We Will Rebuild.” This one could be called “We Will Indict.”

Lots of folks in South Dade aren’t too impressed. They think something should have been done even sooner about crooked buildersbefore the evidence was trucked off to the dump.

True, Hurricane Andrew’s wreckage revealed widespread illegal construction practices and egregious non-enforcement of the building codes. True, these were crimes inflicted on thousands of homeowners, crimes that have caused horrible suffering and financial ruin.

And, true, not one contractor responsible for the damage has lost his license. Not one inspector who approved the shoddy work has been punished.

But that’s only because authorities decided to set an ingenious trap, one that required patience.

Sure, it would have been easy to rush in and prosecute a few lousy builders after their Tinker-Toy subdivisions blew apart in the hurricane. It would have been simple to collect the defective trusses and holey shingles, and then show a jury the right way to put on a roof.

It would have been easy, all right. Too easy. And it would have spoiled the secret plan.

Think about it. Indicting crooked builders too soon after Hurricane Andrew might have scared off many of the thieves and con men masquerading as legitimate contractors who stampeded Florida to cash in on the storm.

So authorities shrewdly decided to lie low and pretend they weren’t interested in what was happening in South Dade. They knew it would soon be a bonanza of sleaze. They knew that there weren’t enough honest builders to go around, that people desperate to have their homes rebuilt would eventually turn to unscrupulous strangers.

And they were right. Each day since Andrew has brought new reports of outrageous rip-offs and incompetent workmanship. Many homeowners have lost all their insurance money to fly-by-night vagabonds. Since August, the DPR’s Miami office has logged a 1,800 percent increase in complaints against contractors.

For state investigators, the waiting has paid off. They now have a much larger number of cases to choose from, and therefore a much better chance of actually winning one or two.

Unfortunately, it won’t help the thousands of people fleeced by shady operators during the last 11 months. Thousands more won’t realize that they also have been conned until another hurricane hits and their roofs fly off like a bad hat.

But don’t worry. When that happens, the state of Florida will be there again, ready to swoop in with crack investigators and prosecutors. You might not see them for, oh, the first 10 or 11 months after the disaster, but that doesn’t mean they don’t care.

No, they’re just lying low, waiting for the trap to spring.

Government can’t be trusted to enforce codes

December 30, 1993

Finally, thanks to Hurricane Andrew, an insurance company gets wise.

United States Fidelity and Guaranty (USF&G) has announced that it will begin inspecting every home it insures for potential storm losses. In other words, company-paid experts will do the job once entrusted to local building officials.

It makes good sense, given the scandal of Andrew. The wonder is that more insurance companies aren’t doing the same thing.

The hurricane tragically confirmed that government cannot be relied upon to enforce building codes, especially in areas of uncontrolled growth. Andrew turned South Dade into a panorama of devastation, much of it caused by lousy construction and a lack of competent code enforcement.

The insurance industry took its worst beating ever, paying out $16.5 billion in claims. We know what happened next: sharp rate increases, and attempted mass cancellations of Florida policies. Most insurers have restricted or even stopped insuring new homes in coastal regions.

That’s one way to cut losses, the cold-blooded way. It unfairly punishes people with well-built houses and also punishes honest home builders. The USF&G experiment is more humane and ultimately smarter for the industry: Its own inspectors will rate the houses.

Consider how fussy these firms are about auto insurance. The annual premiums on a new Ferrari are thousands more than those on a 5-year-old Tercel. Why? The sports car is a bigger investment, and statistically a bigger risk.

It seems logical, then, that insurers would view a high-risk house with even greater concern. A house, say, built with no hurricane straps. Or too few nails in the shingles. Or defective gables.

But until Hurricane Andrew, insurance companies seldom asked questions about the quality of construction in most subdivisions. As long as a house passed local inspection, getting a policy was virtually automatic. Everybody made money, everybody was happy.

Andrew spoiled the party. The insurance industry was shellshocked by the extent of unnecessary destruction, and by its own studies predicting losses would be three times higher if a storm hit Miami directly.

It was evident that Dade County had failed, spectacularly, to make sure its housing was safe from hurricane winds. In several areas, code enforcement had been a costly charade.

One way to avoid future failures is for insurance companies to do the inspections themselves. The advantages are obvious. Private inspectors wouldn’t have the ludicrous quotas imposed on county inspectors, nor would they be subject to cronyism and political pressures. Many homeowners would welcome a visit from an independent expert.

Not long after the hurricane, a State Farm executive told me that hiring its own inspectors was a good idea, but too expensive. It’s hard to imagine anything more expensive than Andrew.

Say State Farm spent $20 million a year on building inspections.That’s only 1/170th of the $3.4 billion that the company shelled out in hurricane claims. In retrospect, inspectors would have been a smart investment.

While USF&G insures less than 1 percent of Florida’s homeowners, its new inspection policy covers all customers around the country. If other insurers tried the same program, the quality of coastal construction might improve dramatically. Who’s going to a build a house that can’t be insured?

The key is incentive. Insurance companies have the most to lose when the next hurricane hitsand the strongest motivation to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself. If that means climbing a few roofs and counting a few nails, it’s a small price to pay.

How soon we forget what these storms do

June 9, 1994

The governor’s special hurricane committee has warned that Florida is flirting with “great loss of life and property in coming years” unless strict construction laws are passed.

The committee’s chairman made “an urgent plea that this report not be put on a shelf and forgotten.”

The governor was LeRoy Collins. The year was 1960. The hurricane was Donna. Everyone wanted to make sure such needless destruction wouldn’t happen again.

But time passed, and people did forget. Just like today.

A hearing examiner says the only Metro building inspector fired in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew should get his job backa poetic beginning to the new hurricane season.

It was a foregone conclusion that nobody of consequence would be punished for the crimes exposed by Andrew. The builders who slapped together the lousy houses, the developers who sold them and the inspectors who rubber-stamped them had little to worry about from Dade prosecutors, or anyone else.

What modest progress is being made to prevent another disaster comes against powerful opposition. Even now, special interests are trying to weaken hurricane reforms before they take effect.

From a pessimistic Herb Saffir, engineer and nationally recognized expert on hurricane damage: “The only thing I can say is, I hope we don’t get an Andrew-type storm coming through the populated areas of Miami.”

After Andrew, public outrage and press scrutiny forced the Metro Commission to review building practices and enforcement. The Board of Rules and Appeals, a lap dog of the building trades, was supplanted by a more independent Building Code Committee.

To the surprise of no one (especially those living at Country Walk or Naranja Lakes), the panel found that much of Andrew’s devastation was the result of poor housing designs and flawed construction. Yet virtually every worthwhile reform faced opposition. The industry’s recurring argument was that home buyers won’t pay a little extra for better shutters, stronger windows and nailed-down roofs. Total nonsense.

Eventually, new standards were approved. Shutters, garage doors and windows would be required to withstand higher winds, high-speed impacts and cyclic “loading”the push and pull of hurricane gusts.

The Metro Commission’s reaction? Delay, delay, delay.

The latest date for the new safety standards to take effect is Sept. 1, a week after Andrew’s second anniversary. But some members of the code committee fear the commission will bow to pressure and stall the deadline once again.

If that happens, says engineer Jose Mitrani, “then it’s a joke, a fraud being perpetrated on the people of Dade County.”

Some builders have taken the initiative, producing solid, medium-priced homes designed to weather most hurricanes. Others prefer to keep cutting corners, pushing Metro commissioners to help the industry regain control of regulation. Hefty campaign donations help.