What was the name of the hurricane which devastated South Florida in August 1992, especially the Homestead area, south of Miami, leaving 250,000 people homeless?

The catastrophic storm that struck South Florida in August 1992 was Hurricane Andrew. It made landfall on August 24th as a compact but ferocious Category 5 hurricane, one of only four to ever hit the United States with that intensity. With sustained winds of 165 mph, the storm's eye wall scoured communities south of Miami, with the city of Homestead and the surrounding agricultural areas bearing the most devastating impact. The storm's power was so immense that it destroyed over 63,000 homes and left a staggering quarter of a million people homeless in its wake.

At the time, Andrew was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, causing over $26 billion in damages. The sheer scale of the destruction served as a critical wake-up call, exposing inadequate construction and inspection practices. As a direct result, Florida enacted a statewide building code, one of the strictest in the nation, to ensure that future structures could better withstand hurricane-force winds. This legacy of improved building standards is one of the most significant and lasting outcomes of the storm's tragic passage.