History of Florida
Hurricane Andrew in August 1992 struck Homestead, just south of Miami, as a Category 5 hurricane, leaving forty people dead, 100,000 homes damaged or destroyed, more than a million people left without electricity, and damages of $20–30 billion. Much of South Florida's sensitive vegetation was severely damaged. The region had not seen a storm of such power in decades. Besides heavy property damage, the hurricane nearly destroyed the region's insurance industry.
Hurricane Ike
Ike was blamed for at least 195 deaths. Of these deaths, 74 were in Haiti, which was already trying to recover from the impact of three storms (Fay, Gustav, and Hanna) which had made landfall that same year. Seven people were killed in Cuba by Ike. In the United States, 113 people were reported killed, directly or indirectly, and 16 were still missing as of August 2011. Due to its immense size, Ike caused devastation from the Louisiana coastline all the way to the Kenedy County region near Corpus Christi, Texas. In addition, Ike caused flooding and significant damage along the Mississippi coastline and the Florida Panhandle Damages from Ike in U.S. coastal and inland areas are estimated at $30 billion (2008 USD), with additional damage of $7.3 billion in Cuba (the costliest storm ever in that country), $200 million in the Bahamas, and $500 million in the Turks and Caicos, amounting to a total of at least $38 billion in damage. At the time, the hurricane was the second-costliest in United States history; it was later surpassed by Hurricanes Sandy (2012), Harvey (2017), Irma (2017), and Maria (2017). The search-and-rescue operation after Ike was the largest search-and-rescue operation in Texas history.