Shhhhhh! Let the inspector get his sleep

June 4, 1990

When investigators tailed Dade building inspectors on daily rounds, they saw: a roofing inspector who never climbed a ladder the whole time; an electrical inspector who goofed off at a bowling alley; an elevator inspector who spent county time napping at the library.

Construction was certified on some projects using the convenient drive-by method, so the inspector never had to leave the comfort of his car. Other work was approved, site unseen.

The Dade grand jury says the Building and Zoning Department is often more devoted to helping the construction industry than protecting the public from sleazy contractors. It's virtually the same conclusion that another grand jury reached in 1976.

Nothing ever changes. Only four years ago, an undercover cop posing as a building inspector collected thousands of dollars in "gifts" from local contractors. Detectives said it was business as usual.

Efforts to weed out the crooks and deadbeats have been stymied. Just last week, prosecutors mysteriously declined to provide the names of those few inspectors whose antics were exposed in the most recent probe. This means they're still on the job—or at least pretending to be.

If only they kept a journal ...

8 A.M. Drove out to Old Cutler Shady-Lakes-On-the-Bay Estates for a thorough inspection. The cement is still slightly mushy, but what can you expect after only six weeks? When I got back to the car, I discovered someone had dropped an envelope with $500 on the front seat. Must be my lucky day!

8:07 A.M. Drove out to New Cutler Meadows-Near-the-Bay to check on complaints of substandard work. Everything looked jim-dandy to me. I leaned my golf bag against several walls, and not one fell down. While I was checking the place over, someone put two first-class plane tickets to Bermuda on the windshield of my car. Some sort of sweepstakes, I guess. Talk about luck!

9-10 A.M. Stopped by library to check the stocks in the Wall Street Journal. Blue chips look strong, but I'm thinking about dumping IBM while it's riding high. Also, I wonder if I went too heavy into tax-free munis.

10:15 A.M. Drove out to Green Cutler Gardens Somewhat-Near-the-Bay to check on reports of inferior drywall. Another false alarm: Every wall I inspected was dry as a bone. When I got back to the car, I found a new gold Rolex Submariner on the front seat. Too bad I've already got one.

10:30-Noon. Stopped at the bowling alley to see how the ceiling struts were holding up after 23 years. Just by coincidence, the All-Dade Hooters Waitress League was having a tournament, so I stayed to watch—just to make sure they weren't injured by any falling beams.

12:15 P.M. Ran into the new guy, Mario, on a site for that new nursing home. Get this—he was actually up on a ladder, checking out some piddly leak in the roof. A ladder! I nearly busted a gut laughing. Told him he should've been a fireman.

12:30 P.M. Tried to inspect the New World Old Cutler Financial Plaza-In-the-Bay but traffic was lousy and it started to drizzle. Just so happened I could see the structure perfectly from Hooters, where I'd stopped for a late lunch. So I used my binoculars to count the floors: forty-two, right on the button! As I was phoning in my inspection, somebody broke into my car and left a deed to a three-bedroom condo in Cozumel. Not only that, they were considerate enough to put it in a third-party offshore trust!

1:55 P.M. Went out to Rolling Cutler Hills Nowhere-Near-the-Bay Estates for a final inspection, and all 1,344 units checked out fine—at least they looked pretty darn nice from the car. As I drove past, someone lobbed a tooled-leather valise in the front seat. Just a guess, but it looks like it might contain $25,000 in nonsequential unmarked bills. What a day I'm having!

2:11 P.M. Holy cow, where did the time go? The wife is probably worried sick. Still, I ought to swing by the bowling alley once more to double check those struts.

Now, perhaps, we'll develop with more care

August 27, 1992

OK, God, you got our attention.

Heck, you've eighty-sixed an entire U.S. Air Force base. Who wouldn't be impressed?

And about that South Florida Building Code—well, maybe it's not as tough as they promised us. Or maybe it's not being enforced with what you'd call unflagging diligence. Sure seems peculiar that so many older homes survived your Hurricane Andrew with little or no damage, while newer subdivisions exploded into match sticks.

God, was this hurricane a pop quiz on survival?

Because if you were testing courage and compassion, you won't find more of it anywhere. Heroes walk every street, or what's left of the streets. The valor on display in South Dade makes Desert Storm look like a Tupperware party.

But, God, if you were testing us on how wisely we've cared for this astonishingly fragile peninsula, then we failed. We've done some dumb things, starting with reckless planning and manic overdevelopment.

In our lust to carve up this place and hawk it as a waterfront paradise, we crammed four million people along a flat and vulnerable coast. It's complete lunacy, of course. We haven't been able to employ them all, protect them from crime, properly educate their children or even guarantee the most basic of human needs—drinking water.

And, as we've seen this week, we certainly haven't provided safe housing. Thousands and thousands of families are homeless and heartbroken this morning. The rest of us, blessed by capricious luck, finally have time to reflect.

We thought we were ready. Honest, we knew the drill. Who hadn't seen the harrowing footage from Donna, Camille and Hugo? By the time the TV weather people told us to worry, we were worried. We collected our D-cell batteries and our Sterno, our duct tape and our plywood, and then we watched Andrew march due west. We waited hopefully for the Big Swerve, but it never came.

Six hundred thousand souls who had never been through one of your hurricanes actually evacuated when they were told to do so. Elsewhere that might be routine behavior, God, but down here it's close to a miracle. Moses himself would have a hard time rousting the roller-bladers from South Beach.

All that valiant preparation—and still the community lies devastated. What did we expect? Aim a hurricane's fury at four million people and the only possible outcome is a horror.

We had been warned, again and again. The people who should've been listening were too busy counting their campaign contributions from big developers. Now, as always, the suffering is heaped on the most helpless—those whose only sin was buying into the Florida dream.

The only good to come from Andrew would be a resolve not to let it happen again. We can't change the course of hurricanes, but we can damn sure build houses with walls that don't disintegrate and roofs that don't peel like rotted bananas.

It's been about 30 years since South Florida got nailed by a big storm. You probably figured we needed a reminder. Next time, don't wait so long. Send us a modest, midsize hurricane every couple of years, and soon Florida will have some of the world's sturdiest and most sensible housing developments.

Thirty years was plenty of time for us to screw up. We got lax, we got greedy. We quintupled the population and idiotically called it progress. Now it's a disaster area.

God, please don't say you told us so. We got the message.

And thanks for not making it worse.