Kick Ass (36 page)

Each summer that passes without a new hurricane dims the public’s memory, and emboldens commissioners to roll back reforms. Many experts fear that if a Category Four storm slams us this year, the damage will be worse than it was in August 1992.

Mitrani advises home buyers to hire their own experts to make sure the construction is sound. The alternative is to entrust your family’s safety to politicians concerned mostly with pleasing big campaign contributors.

It would be inexcusable if the dire post-Andrew warnings are “put on a shelf and forgotten.” Apparently the only event that will stop that from happening is another terrible storm.

Just the fittest will survive next hurricane

August 25, 1994

Charles Darwin believed that species evolve by survival of the fittest. His theory, slightly updated, will be put to the test when the next hurricane hits.

The smartest will do fine. The not-so-smart will be scrounging for roofers.

Everybody knows what happened two years ago this week, when Andrew ripped South Dade: Many thousands of homes went to pieces.

Lousy construction, inferior materials, poor engineering and a weakened building code all contributed to the devastation.

Aerial photographs told the story: one subdivision in ruins; across the street, another development barely damaged. Facing Andrew’s fiercest gusts, some houses held strong; in the storm’s weakest wind bands, other houses mysteriously disintegrated.

It wasn’t fate. It was the difference between good and bad construction.

On Sept. 1, tougher building regulations take effect in South Florida. Windows and shutters on new homes must be stronger. Roofs will require more straps and heavier trusses. Plywood sheathing will be thicker.

To no one’s surprise, some builders are rushing to get permits before the new rules take effect. They say there’s a shortage of the new approved materials, and they can’t afford delays. Others complain that the hurricane reforms will force them to raise prices on homes, and they’ll lose customers.

This, from a developer in Pembroke Pines: “For something that happens once in 35 years, you are charging the public a lot of money.”

Now that’s the kind of responsible builder I wantsomeone so ignorant of Florida history that he thinks hurricanes come ashore every three and a half decades. Forget the many destructive storms of the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s. Forget the pair that hit in 1950, and Donna 10 years later.

Go on and cut corners. Why fret about the lives and safety of your loved one, and the security of all your earthly possessions, when you can save a few hundred bucks by using 1/2-inch plywood?

This is where Darwin’s theory kicks in. Government can do only so much to save people from their own stupidity. Then Mother Nature takes over.

As hurricane survivors can attest, the price of a house isn’t nearly as critical as its structural integrity. For smart home buyers, the priority is finding a place that won’t crash down on their heads.

After Andrew and the scandals it exposed, anyone who buys a crackerbox house or condo or trailer surely must know they’re in temporary housing.

Believe it or not, Florida has many conscientious builders who make solid homes that stand up well to hurricanes. Finding one takes time, and possibly an independent engineer to help you decide.

If it costs a little more than the houses across the street, so what? The houses across the street will probably be rubble in a Category Four storm.

For those who endured Andrew in shabbily built houses, there’s no excuse for making the same mistake twice. For those new to Florida, there’s no excuse for not knowing what happened to thousands of unsuspecting homeowners in 1992, and why.

Which leads back to the building reforms that take effect Sept. 1.

Smart peoplethe fittest, in the Darwinian lexiconwould demand housing made to the stronger specifications. They wouldn’t hire a builder who’s racing a deadline so he can save on materials.

But not everyone is smart. In each herd are the strong and the weak, the survivors and the doomed. Darwin understood Nature’s dramatic style of choosing.

One way is a hurricane.

When homes collapse, best course is court

April 16, 1995

We didn’t need Nostradamus to predict this one:

After 2 1/2 years of so-called investigation, the Dade State Attorney’s Office has found nobody to prosecute for the shabby construction of the Country Walk subdivision, blown to twigs by Hurricane Andrew.

Residents are disheartened but not stunned, given the state’s record in ducking these cases.

Lennar Homes similarly was let off the hook for its crackerbox construction. Now it’s Arvida/JMB Partners and the Walt Disney Co., which owned Country Walk when much of the subdivision was built.

Goofy, Pluto and the other construction supervisors are yukking it up today.

Who can forget Country Walk, Land of the Flying Gablestrusses without braces, braces without nails, corners without brackets. Of 184 homes, 147 were deemed uninhabitable after Andrew.

Initially, Arvida blamed Mother Nature, the standard alibi following the hurricane. Yet independent reviews of the destruction in South Dade cited shoddy work, dumb designs, substandard materials and lax code enforcement.

Still, nobody is going to jail. The State Attorney’s Office says it cannot prove criminal wrongdoing at Country Walk, though the term “insufficient evidence” seems hollow to those who were knee-deep in it on Aug. 24, 1992.

The companies probably lost no sleep worrying about an indictment. What really grabbed their attention were the lawsuits.

These days it’s fashionable to rail about runaway litigation. A key conservative plank is “tort reform,” meant to discourage private citizens from suing big companies.

Yet that was the only remedy for customers of Lennar and Arvida who were wiped out by the hurricane. Suing was the only way to get compensation, and settlements provided that.

Insurance companies are also in court with Arvida and Disney over the Country Walk debacle. This is good if it discourages flimsy house building. The larger the cash penalty, the greater the incentive for companies to be more diligent next time.

Eventually, corner-cutting developers will sit down with a calculator and figure out that Andrew was bad for the bottom line. While it’s great to sell scads of houses, it’s not good business when scads of customers and their insurance companies sue your pants off.

Homeowners were left with few options. The building industry obviously didn’t police itself, while government failed at every step in its obligation to protect consumers from such a preventable tragedy.

Plied by campaign donations from developers, Dade politicians made scarcely a peep as the South Florida Building Code was watered down. Even then it wasn’t well-enforced. And those who violated or corrupted it seldom got punished.

So that left the civil courts as the only forum where Arvida, Lennar and the others could be held accountable.

The State Attorney’s Office admitted as much. In explaining why it took so long to complete the Country Walk probe, the lead investigator said he was “waiting to see if the civil litigation revealed any smoking guns.”

Good thing they don’t handle murder cases that way.

For home buyers, the lesson is simple but cynical. If you’re looking for a safely built house or condominium, expect no trustworthy safeguards from the state or county. And expect no action when gross abuses come to light.

The way to avoid heartache in the next hurricane is to avoid living in cheesy cardboard subdivisions. Judging by the houses that endured Andrew’s worst winds, good builders are out there. The trick is finding them.

Start with the ones who aren’t tied up in court.

Novel approach: We build it, we approve it

May 11, 1997

This week’s Bureaucracy-Buster Prize goes to Carlos Valdes, chief building inspector for Dade County.

For five years Valdes moonlighted as a roofer and repairman, pulling 31 construction permits from the same agency for which he worked. Twice he inspected his own jobs, and gave final approval on both of them.

At first glance, this seems to be an outrageous conflict of interest, particularly if you’re a competing contractor.

And for a building department pilloried after Hurricane Andrew for lax enforcement, it might seem slightly

well, irregular for an inspector to be approving his own construction work.

But from Valdes’ perspective, you could make the case that he was merely trying to streamline a cumbersome bureaucratic process.

Call it Carlos’ One-Stop Roofingthe guy who lays your shingles also inspects the job. For customers in a hurry, it was a nifty arrangement:

Valdes: I’m all done with your roof, Mrs. Smith.

Customer: Fantastic, Carlos

oh, but now I’ll have to wait weeks for those chowderheads at the building department to come out for an inspection.

Valdes: No, you won’t, Mrs. Smith. See, I’m also a building inspector! Let me climb up there right now and check it out.

Customer (elated): Oh, Carlos, you think of everything!

Imagine the relief of home builders and owners, who no longer had to fret about their roofs passing muster. Suddenly it was a done deal.

If Valdes didn’t personally do the inspecting, his co-workers did. According to county records, fellow inspectors once flunked a Valdes roofthen Valdes himself signed off on the final papers, saying the problem was fixed.

Quick and efficient. Isn’t that what we all want from local government?

Unfortunately, there’s some silly rule against Dade building inspectors part-timing as builders. Valdes has been suspended with pay while an investigation is conducted. That’s the price of being an innovator.

Anyone who’s tried to get a house built or repaired in South Florida since the big hurricane knows how exasperating it can be. Often there are long delays between inspections, because building departments are so short-staffed and overworked.

The Valdes approach was a marvel of simplicity: We build it, we approve it.

It’s the sort of idea that would appeal to some Metro-Dade commissioners, who seem primed to cave in to industry pressure and roll back post-Andrew reforms.

Heck, go for broke. Why not deputize all contractors as county building inspectors?

You’d save lots of time and paperwork. You’d save wear-and-tear on county vehicles. And you’d save a fortune on ladders, because builders usually provide their own.

Last, but not least, you’d eliminate the corruption problem. Under the Valdes system, there’d be little reason for unseemly cash payoffs.

Honest builders would do honest inspections. As for the crooked builders, whom would they bribethemselves? That seems unlikely, even in Miami.

To be sure, a one-stop permit-and-inspection program would have drawbacks. A careless contractor probably isn’t the best qualified to say whether his construction methods are sturdy or not.

But look on the flip side. After the next hurricane hits, we’ll know precisely who’s competent and who isn’t. Builders won’t be able to blame inspectors, and inspectors won’t be able to blame builders

because they’ll be one and the same.

It’ll be so darn simple that maybe, just maybe, the state attorney might be able to indict some of them.

Cyberfraud simplifies corruption

August 9, 1997

No anniversary of Hurricane Andrew would be complete without a scandal in Dade County’s building department. This time it’s cybercorruption.

Somebody logged onto the master computer and typed in phony inspection approvals for hundreds of construction projects. Many homes and buildings might need to be reinspected and repaired.

In some cases, roofs that flunked repeated on-site inspections were mysteriously approved later, by computer. Most entries were traced through a password to a former building department clerk, Pablo Prieto, who denies any wrongdoing.

Whoever the phantom hacker was, the implications of his scheme are far-reaching for development in South Florida. If computerized corruption is perfected, it will revolutionize bribery as we know it in municipal building departments.

The customary method is an all-too-familiar charade. A crooked inspector gets into a county truck, drives out to a construction job, maybe even climbs up on the actual roof for a minute or so, if it’s not too hot.

Afterward, resting in the air-conditioned comfort of the truck, the inspector might find a $100 bill tucked under the visor, or tickets to a Dolphins game on the seat. That’s when he writes up his report, approving the roof as sturdy and up to code.

As graft goes, it’s fairly uncomplicated. However, it’s also time-consuming, wasteful and increasingly risky.

Computers could streamline the whole corruption process from start to finish, paradoxically benefiting taxpayers as well as dishonest builders.

If a bad roof can be “fixed” with a few surreptitious strokes on a keyboard, there’s no point in sending a shady inspector to a site. Think of the money the county would save in one year on gasoline, tolls and wear-and-tear on its vehicles. Think of what it would save on stepladders.

In fact, if the chore of falsifying building records can be handled more efficiently by cybersavvy clerks, it renders crooked inspections obsolete. Why even bother?

For an unscrupulous builder, computers would take the guesswork and seedy melodrama out of bribery. Never again would you be made to wait around all day in the blazing sun for a roof inspector, in the hopes he was one of those who would take a payoff. Most won’t.

Imagine a day in the not-so-distant future when all you do is call the building department and speak to your friendly hacker-on-the-payroll. He pulls up your company’s file, taps a few words on the screen and, presto!all your roofs are instantly inspected and approved.

Before the lid blew off at Dade’s building department, cybercorruption was spreading rapidly. Investigators are examining 3,000 cases for clues of electronic tampering, and there are plenty.

For instance, the county’s computer lists 18 air-conditioning jobs inspected on a Saturday. The only problem is, air-conditioning inspectors don’t work on Saturdays.

If the hackers weren’t especially careful, they probably knew they didn’t need to be. Officials who uncovered the fraud waited more than a year before notifying the police.

With that kind of ragged oversight, and some clever software, it’s conceivable that an entire subdivision could be cleared, built, sold and occupied without a single legitimate inspector setting foot on the property.

The people who bought homes there would never find out the truth, unless a hurricane came and blew off their roofs and knocked down their walls.

In which event, Dade building officials better pray the storm is big enough to knock out the computer’s memory, too. That’s the one thing that could byte them where it counts.

Storms ahead if construction bill is passed

April 27, 1997

With only five weeks to hurricane season, the Legislature has taken the first step toward weakening some important post-Andrew construction reforms.

The House has given preliminary approval to a mind-boggling law that would prohibit local governments from imposing some building rules stricter than those required by the state.

They ought to call it the Roofers-from-Hell Relief Act.

It’s aimed largely at Dade County, which had (for obvious reasons) imposed tougher regulations for overseeing construction.

Dade had taken the radical position that people who put houses together should know what they’re doing, or have a supervisor who does. For instance, the county now requires one licensed journeyman for every three unlicensed workers on a job.

Builders didn’t like the rule, so they enlisted two friendly politicians to shoot it downSen. Fred Dudley of Fort Myers and Rep. Carlos Lacasa of Miami.

Remember those names the next time you open your homeowner’s insurance and wonder why the premium is so high.

Perhaps Lacasa and Dudley didn’t read the Dade grand jury’s report on Hurricane Andrew, but you can bet State Farm did. Among the panel’s recommendations were stiffer qualifications for construction workers, to help weed out incompetents.

Lacasa says Dade’s journeyman rule is burdensome and unnecessary, because plumbers and electriciansthe trades most affected by itweren’t responsible for buildings blown apart during Hurricane Andrew.

He’s right, but those who were responsible should be equally tickled by Lacasa and Dudley’s legislation. If it passes, local communities will find it hard, if not impossible, to independently crack down on unqualified roofers, masons and carpenters.

That’s because the proposed law would block Dade and other counties from adopting any “professional qualification requirements relating to contractors or their work force

“

Parroting industry lobbyists, Lacasa blames a flawed codenot crummy constructionfor Andrew’s devastation. This guy should be a poster boy for short-term memory loss syndrome.

Does the name Country Walk ring a bell? Among the rubble of that development was ample evidence of slipshod and reckless worktrusses without braces, braces without nails, and more.

In fact, serious construction mistakes were documented at virtually every subdivision that had been leveled by the storm. While the building code wasn’t perfect, at least it called for roofs to be strapped securely to housesan inconvenience, apparently, for a few builders.

So widespread was the problem of bungled workmanship that hundreds of Dade homeowners sued, and some of the area’s largest developers agreed to settle out of court.

None of this escaped the notice of insurance companies, which had taken a $16 billion hit from the 1992 hurricane. Some firms pulled out of Florida, and those that stayed raised their property rates astronomically.

Dade’s building reforms came after lengthy public hearings with plenty of expert testimony. Even the politicians seemed to understand that a stronger, better enforced code not only would save lives and property, it could lead to lower insurance rates.

Don’t get your hopes up now. Lobbyists for the home-building industry are pushing Metro to roll back some of the post-Andrew changes, and to weaken the code enforcement office.

Similar forces are behind the foolish Lacasa-Dudley bill. How dare Dade try to protect people from construction rip-offs! That’s a job for the Legislature.

Which clearly needs some firsthand experience with hurricanes. On the eve of a new season, we can only hope.[“#chapter_12”]