article: With its well-preserved historic buildings and a typical south Florida small-town atmosphere, Krome Avenue is one of the most important landmarks in the city of Homestead. The clean and peaceful street bears no resemblance to the way it looked on 25 August 1992, a few hours after Hurricane Andrew - a powerful category five storm - made landfall. Striking in the dead of night, the storm wrought unprecedented havoc on the area. At the time, Andrew was considered the most costly tropical Atlantic cyclone in US history. With damages amounting to $25bn (£15.8bn), it left up to 250,000 people homeless and claimed 26 lives, according to the US National Hurricane Center. Twenty years on, BBC Mundo's Jaime Gonzalez and Thomas Sparrow return to Homestead to find out how residents remember that day, and how have they recovered from the ordeal. Andrew was devastating. Ten thousand people left in the first 30 days. My house was 50% destroyed and my business took a good hit too. I remember the morning I [found] looters in my warehouse. They were walking out with the generator and some other tools and things. Martial law was imposed. Everybody was carrying a gun. The military was brought in and there was a curfew. You were not allowed out after dark, and if you were you were arrested. For the first three months we did nothing but go from house to house, supporting friends to get back some quality of life, getting water out of their homes and ripping up the carpets. I think Homestead should be remembered for its tenacity, its willingness to hang on and fight to get back on its feet. We are now much better prepared for hurricanes. After Andrew, the construction standards changed tremendously. We now have one of the most stringent building codes in the country. Everybody will tell you that a hurricane sounds like a train hurtling towards you and you feel like it is going to hit at any moment. And that's how it sounded to me. I had four grandchildren with me at the time and I just kept telling them that everything was going to be all right. At the time, I was part of the city council, which was turned into the main communication centre. The most important thing was answering questions: Where can I get fuel? Where can I get ice? Ice was the most precious thing those days! Later we had one of the biggest outdoor barbecues ever to cook our food. We already knew we wouldn't get electricity back for a while. It was like being on an island full of trash. There were piles at the roadside and it was weeks before it was cleared up. The city manager said that it could take up to two years to recover. Can you imagine? That's how dumb we were! We thought that all will be over in two years. That thought really made us feel good. It was really a good 10 years. There was so much to do. My brother came over the day
summary: Twenty years after Hurricane Andrew, residents of Homestead, Florida, recall the storm that changed their life.