Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

Tis the season some builders get generous December 16, 1987

Once again it's that merry season of the year when contractors all around Dade County are racking their brains and wondering: What do I give the building inspector this Christmas?

Good news! Cash is "in" again, and it's perfectly safe—judging by the courthouse results of that big Metro police undercover sting.

Posing as a county inspector, detective Alex Ramirez collected almost $6,000 from builders in just four months. Driving from site to site in West Dade, Ramirez seldom got through a day without somebody slipping him wads of money, food, fine wine or a bottle of booze.

Typical was this exchange between the undercover cop and a building foreman, recorded by a hidden microphone:

Ramirez: "You know, you don't have to give me anything."

Foreman: "No, I don't have to give you anything, but in life, don't I leave a tip when I eat in a cafe or a bar?"

Twenty-five people were ultimately indicted in the sting, and 15 of those pleaded guilty or no contest. All received small fines and probation, and all but one had the incident wiped from their permanent records. Nobody went to jail.

In dishing out such punishment, the Dade judicial system sent a message loud and strong: Payoffs are no big deal. Don't sweat it.

A welcome sentiment—and just in time for the holidays!

Believe it or not, the custom of secretly purchasing the cooperation of public servants is still regarded as controversial. In some parts of the country it is referred to as "bribery"—and judges actually put people in jail for it.

Fortunately, many of the indicted Dade contractors were able to convince our courts that the cash wasn't a bribe in the naughty sense—but rather a "tip," or lunch money, or just an innocuous gesture of friendship. Some opted for the business-as-usual defense, with uncanny results.

An attorney for Hector Brito Jr., who had paid $50 to detective Ramirez, insisted that it wasn't really a bribe because Brito didn't specifically ask for something in return.

"It was more of a thank-you, which is very common in the business," the lawyer explained. (Circuit Judge David Gersten threw out the case.)

Similarly, a jury acquitted carpenter Jorge Gonzalez of bribery after he admitted giving Ramirez $20 "for lunch" on three occasions. Gonzalez's attorney said his client was not seeking special favors, but gave the cash merely because Ramirez "arrived promptly and had been a gentleman."

Untouched by the police sting were those few inspectors who make a practice of shaking down Dade builders and contractors. Since these greedy little suckers are still on the loose, they'll probably be expecting stocking-stuffers for the Yule season.

A word of caution: If you're giving cash, don't go over $100 per bribe. In fact, the less you give, the more innocent it looks.

Whenever possible, avoid cramming the money directly into the inspector's palms. Instead, place it in an unmarked envelope and leave it in a clever place where he's sure to find it—taped to the hood ornament of his El Dorado, for example.

When paying off an inspector, don't ever demand something in return. Even though both of you know perfectly well what the money is for, don't come right out and say it. Not only is it rude, it's risky.

You never can tell when some run-amok jury might misconstrue the meaning of: "Hey, Mac, here's the 50 smackers for the plumbing inspection."

Should you have the misfortune of bribing an undercover cop, don't panic. Just tell the judge you thought the guy was collecting for United Way. Tell him the cash had nothing to do with the fact that the guy inspected your entire 6oo-unit apartment building without ever leaving his car.

The court will understand. Some old scrooges might call it corruption, but down here we call it the spirit of giving.

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.

Blustery talk about Andrew is all hot air October 18, 1992

Don't buy the breathless hype that Hurricane Andrew was "The Big One." It wasn't, not by a long shot.

The Big One won't strike the most thinly populated stretch of South Florida, the way Andrew did. The Big One scores a dead hit on downtown Miami, Hialeah or Fort Lauderdale.

Unlike Andrew, the Big One won't blow through in a few frantic hours. It parks on top of us for two or three horrifying days, dumping enough rain to flood most neighborhoods to ruin.

And the Big One won't be a tightly packed storm, the way Andrew was. It'll be huge and rambling, like Camille, and its path of total destruction will breach three counties.

Not that Andrew was a pussy cat; it was a swift, powerful hurricane. Those who've had their lives shattered cannot imagine anything worse, and there isn't.

But to propagate the melodramatic notion that Andrew was a once-in-a-century catastrophe is not only scientifically wrong, it's morally reckless.

Understand that certain folks—politicians, developers and the building lobby—have a vested interest in promoting the myth of the Big One.

They want you to believe that Andrew was a freak storm with satanic powers, and that nothing could have prevented the mass destruction.

Rubbish. The only freakish thing about Andrew was that it hit us, for a change. It did what all Category Four storms do—tore the hell out of everything in its way. Another one equally fierce could hit next week, next month or next year.

The other day, the Latin Builders Association took out a full-page ad to whine about all the bad press that the construction industry is getting. The LBA implied that shoddy workmanship wasn't widespread, that Andrew's supernatural gusts were humanly unstoppable.

Especially if your contractor didn't bother to fasten your roof to your house.

Lennar, Arvida and other developers also are pitching the myth of the Big One: Hey, we sell sturdy homes. Nothing could have survived Andrew. (Except the low-cost houses built by Habitat for Humanity.)

While the companies try to cover their butts, homeowners are filing richly deserved lawsuits. A grand jury is convening (yes, again). Even the State Attorney's Office is on the prowl for indictments. More shocking revelations are sure to come.

Andrew exposed, at a terrible human cost, what happens when a system meant to protect citizens is poisoned by greed, politics, corruption and ineptitude.

Failure occurred at every step. The vaunted South Florida Building Code deliberately was weakened to allow faster, cheaper work. Staples instead of nails? Great idea! Wafer board instead of plywood? Hey, give it a try. What next—Lego blocks?

What were these idiots thinking? Clearly no one—from the builders to the inspectors to the buyers—had ever experienced a major hurricane. Responsible tradesmen warned of disaster, but nobody listened. Politicians such as Mayor Steve Clark sat zombielike while the regulations were neutered. Why bite the hand that bankrolls your re-election?

County Manager Joaquin Avino was in charge of building and zoning when some of the crummiest developments were approved. When an NBC reporter recently asked about those projects, Avino experienced a bout of prime-time amnesia. It was truly pathetic.

Andrew revealed the system for the incestuous charade that it is, and now the guilty parties are scrambling for cover. It's not our fault, they cry, it's Nature! Two hundred mile-per-hour winds! The Big One!

The Big Lie is what it is. So much preventable damage, so much unnecessary misery—it's not the storm of the century, it's the crime of the century.

Happy ending slow to come at country walk May 6, 1993

Once upon a time, there were 70 or 80 dwarfs who built a place called the Village Homes of Country Walk.

Some of the dwarfs were good workers, but others weren't. The bad dwarfs had names like Lazy, Dizzy, Drowsy, Greedy, Clumsy, Careless and Sleazy. They worked for a company called Walt Disney, which had a snow-white reputation.

One summer night, a fierce hurricane came from the sea. It huffed and it puffed and blew lots of houses down. The people of Country Walk were very surprised, for the dwarfs had promised that the condominiums were built solidly and would not fall apart in a strong wind.

After the storm, the residents went through the rubble of Country Walk and discovered many bad things about the way the dwarfs had built the homes. There were masonry walls with no steel bars for reinforcement, and sometimes no cement! There were wooden posts that hadn't been anchored to the foundations. There were roof trusses that weren't properly attached.

Country Walk was a disaster area, but it wasn't the only one. Across the land, people who lost everything in the hurricane were learning terrible facts about how poorly their houses had been constructed. Soon those people hired lawyers, who began to sue.

At first, the home-building companies said they didn't do anything wrong. They blamed all the damage on the hurricane, which they said was the most powerful storm in the history of the planet! But scientists who studied the hurricane, and engineers who studied the wrecked homes, disputed the builders. They said most damage resulted from cheesy construction.

Facing expensive and embarrassing trials, two companies did something very smart: They caved in, agreeing to give money to those who'd lost their homes in the storm.

A company called Lennar gave $2.4 million to customers in several neighborhoods where houses had disintegrated like match sticks. After deducting legal fees, each owner got about $3,800 from the settlement—a bargain for Lennar, which was one of the most profitable developers in the whole United States.

In the place known as Country Walk, a company called Arvida/JMB Partners agreed to give $2.74 million to the owners of 135 condos that were damaged or destroyed by the hurricane. In exchange, the customers promised not to sue Arvida, and thus spared the company months of humiliating public disclosures about the shabby quality of its Country Walk homes.

But one company that didn't make peace with its customers was Walt Disney, which was more famous for entertaining children than for building condos. Disney had put up 209 units at Country Walk. Many were ruined by the storm that blew in from the sea.

The people in the condos wanted Disney to pay $5.9 million, to make up for the many mistakes made by the bad dwarfs. But the company offered only $2 million, insisting that its homes were nailed together just fine.

So the owners went to court. Suddenly Disney found its snow-white reputation in jeopardy. Several of the bad dwarfs got subpoenaed to testify. Lazy, Clumsy and Careless were the first to snitch.

When Disney's lawyers read the dwarfs' depositions, they became very, very worried. They faxed the Country Walk homeowners and offered lots more money to forget the whole thing. The homeowners accepted the deal, put new roofs on their condos and lived nervously ever after.

Especially during hurricane season.

Slow to act? No, state was setting trap for builders July 29, 1993

This week, the Dade State Attorney's Office and the lieutenant governor announced an ambitious plan to crack down on crooked builders.

Gee, what's the big hurry? It's been only 11 months since the hurricane. South Dade residents have only lost millions of dollars to swindlers, licensed and unlicensed, who have taken the money and left the houses in shambles.

But authorities aren't waiting for something really serious to happen. They're leaping into the fray now, four whole weeks before the first anniversary of the storm.

A press conference put out the word. The state attorney is hiring three new prosecutors, an investigator and two secretaries.The state's Department of Business and Professional Regulation is adding a dozen investigators, plus five persons to help take complaints from the public.

Everybody knows the task force that calls itself "We Will Rebuild." This one could be called "We Will Indict."

Lots of folks in South Dade aren't too impressed. They think something should have been done even sooner about crooked builders—before the evidence was trucked off to the dump.

True, Hurricane Andrew's wreckage revealed widespread illegal construction practices and egregious non-enforcement of the building codes. True, these were crimes inflicted on thousands of homeowners, crimes that have caused horrible suffering and financial ruin.

And, true, not one contractor responsible for the damage has lost his license. Not one inspector who approved the shoddy work has been punished.

But that's only because authorities decided to set an ingenious trap, one that required patience.

Sure, it would have been easy to rush in and prosecute a few lousy builders after their Tinker-Toy subdivisions blew apart in the hurricane. It would have been simple to collect the defective trusses and holey shingles, and then show a jury the right way to put on a roof.

It would have been easy, all right. Too easy. And it would have spoiled the secret plan.

Think about it. Indicting crooked builders too soon after Hurricane Andrew might have scared off many of the thieves and con men masquerading as legitimate contractors who stampeded Florida to cash in on the storm.

So authorities shrewdly decided to lie low and pretend they weren't interested in what was happening in South Dade. They knew it would soon be a bonanza of sleaze. They knew that there weren't enough honest builders to go around, that people desperate to have their homes rebuilt would eventually turn to unscrupulous strangers.

And they were right. Each day since Andrew has brought new reports of outrageous rip-offs and incompetent workmanship. Many homeowners have lost all their insurance money to fly-by-night vagabonds. Since August, the DPR's Miami office has logged a 1,800 percent increase in complaints against contractors.

For state investigators, the waiting has paid off. They now have a much larger number of cases to choose from, and therefore a much better chance of actually winning one or two.

Unfortunately, it won't help the thousands of people fleeced by shady operators during the last 11 months. Thousands more won't realize that they also have been conned until another hurricane hits and their roofs fly off like a bad hat.

But don't worry. When that happens, the state of Florida will be there again, ready to swoop in with crack investigators and prosecutors. You might not see them for, oh, the first 10 or 11 months after the disaster, but that doesn't mean they don't care.

No, they're just lying low, waiting for the trap to spring.

Government can't be trusted to enforce codes December 30, 1993

Finally, thanks to Hurricane Andrew, an insurance company gets wise.

United States Fidelity and Guaranty (USF&G) has announced that it will begin inspecting every home it insures for potential storm losses. In other words, company-paid experts will do the job once entrusted to local building officials.

It makes good sense, given the scandal of Andrew. The wonder is that more insurance companies aren't doing the same thing.

The hurricane tragically confirmed that government cannot be relied upon to enforce building codes, especially in areas of uncontrolled growth. Andrew turned South Dade into a panorama of devastation, much of it caused by lousy construction and a lack of competent code enforcement.

The insurance industry took its worst beating ever, paying out $16.5 billion in claims. We know what happened next: sharp rate increases, and attempted mass cancellations of Florida policies. Most insurers have restricted or even stopped insuring new homes in coastal regions.

That's one way to cut losses, the cold-blooded way. It unfairly punishes people with well-built houses and also punishes honest home builders. The USF&G experiment is more humane and ultimately smarter for the industry: Its own inspectors will rate the houses.

Consider how fussy these firms are about auto insurance. The annual premiums on a new Ferrari are thousands more than those on a 5-year-old Tercel. Why? The sports car is a bigger investment, and statistically a bigger risk.

It seems logical, then, that insurers would view a high-risk house with even greater concern. A house, say, built with no hurricane straps. Or too few nails in the shingles. Or defective gables.

But until Hurricane Andrew, insurance companies seldom asked questions about the quality of construction in most subdivisions. As long as a house passed local inspection, getting a policy was virtually automatic. Everybody made money, everybody was happy.

Andrew spoiled the party. The insurance industry was shell-shocked by the extent of unnecessary destruction, and by its own studies predicting losses would be three times higher if a storm hit Miami directly.

It was evident that Dade County had failed, spectacularly, to make sure its housing was safe from hurricane winds. In several areas, code enforcement had been a costly charade.

One way to avoid future failures is for insurance companies to do the inspections themselves. The advantages are obvious. Private inspectors wouldn't have the ludicrous quotas imposed on county inspectors, nor would they be subject to cronyism and political pressures. Many homeowners would welcome a visit from an independent expert.

Not long after the hurricane, a State Farm executive told me that hiring its own inspectors was a good idea, but too expensive. It's hard to imagine anything more expensive than Andrew.

Say State Farm spent $20 million a year on building inspections.That's only 1/170th of the $3.4 billion that the company shelled out in hurricane claims. In retrospect, inspectors would have been a smart investment.

While USF&G insures less than 1 percent of Florida's homeowners, its new inspection policy covers all customers around the country. If other insurers tried the same program, the quality of coastal construction might improve dramatically. Who's going to a build a house that can't be insured?

The key is incentive. Insurance companies have the most to lose when the next hurricane hits—and the strongest motivation to make sure history doesn't repeat itself. If that means climbing a few roofs and counting a few nails, it's a small price to pay.

How soon we forget what these storms do June 9, 1994

The governor's special hurricane committee has warned that Florida is flirting with "great loss of life and property in coming years" unless strict construction laws are passed.

The committee's chairman made "an urgent plea that this report not be put on a shelf and forgotten."

The governor was LeRoy Collins. The year was 1960. The hurricane was Donna. Everyone wanted to make sure such needless destruction wouldn't happen again.

But time passed, and people did forget. Just like today.

A hearing examiner says the only Metro building inspector fired in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew should get his job back—a poetic beginning to the new hurricane season.

It was a foregone conclusion that nobody of consequence would be punished for the crimes exposed by Andrew. The builders who slapped together the lousy houses, the developers who sold them and the inspectors who rubber-stamped them had little to worry about from Dade prosecutors, or anyone else.

What modest progress is being made to prevent another disaster comes against powerful opposition. Even now, special interests are trying to weaken hurricane reforms before they take effect.

From a pessimistic Herb Saffir, engineer and nationally recognized expert on hurricane damage: "The only thing I can say is, I hope we don't get an Andrew-type storm coming through the populated areas of Miami."

After Andrew, public outrage and press scrutiny forced the Metro Commission to review building practices and enforcement. The Board of Rules and Appeals, a lap dog of the building trades, was supplanted by a more independent Building Code Committee.

To the surprise of no one (especially those living at Country Walk or Naranja Lakes), the panel found that much of Andrew's devastation was the result of poor housing designs and flawed construction. Yet virtually every worthwhile reform faced opposition. The industry's recurring argument was that home buyers won't pay a little extra for better shutters, stronger windows and nailed-down roofs. Total nonsense.

Eventually, new standards were approved. Shutters, garage doors and windows would be required to withstand higher winds, high-speed impacts and cyclic "loading"—the push and pull of hurricane gusts.

The Metro Commission's reaction? Delay, delay, delay.

The latest date for the new safety standards to take effect is Sept. 1, a week after Andrew's second anniversary. But some members of the code committee fear the commission will bow to pressure and stall the deadline once again.

If that happens, says engineer Jose Mitrani, "then it's a joke, a fraud being perpetrated on the people of Dade County."

Some builders have taken the initiative, producing solid, medium-priced homes designed to weather most hurricanes. Others prefer to keep cutting corners, pushing Metro commissioners to help the industry regain control of regulation. Hefty campaign donations help.

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 want—someone 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 people—the fittest, in the Darwinian lexicon—would 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 Gables—trusses 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 Roofing—the 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 roof—then 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 bribe—themselves? 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 cyber-corruption.

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 down—Sen. 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 electricians—the trades most affected by it—weren'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 code—not crummy construction—for 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 work—trusses 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 houses—an 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.