Word: stormfully
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...homeless. The capital of Roseau was flattened in a five-hour assault. The banana crop, mainstay of the island's economy, was totally destroyed. The nearby islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique suffered heavy damage from the winds and torrential rains. So did Puerto Rico, where the storm left at least seven dead...
...church and a school were killed when floodwaters from the Yaque River swept them away. At least 600 more were killed in the Dominican Republic, while an estimated 150,000 were left homeless, including 90,000 in Santo Domingo alone. President Antonio Guzmán understandably described the storm as "this terrible tragedy of David," and reckoned his country had suffered almost $1 billion in agricultural, industrial and other property losses. To make matters worse, tropical storm Frederic suddenly appeared in the wake of David, flooding the streets of the already battered capital and dumping even more rain...
Though its course across Hispaniola weakened the storm, David was still packing winds of 90 m.p.h. and more when it passed over the eastern tip of Cuba and headed straight for Florida's southeast coast. Governor Robert Graham ordered the evacuation of low-lying areas, and as many as 300,000 people headed for higher ground, including 15,000 from the Keys alone. Public buses carried senior citizens from Miami Beach to stormproof shelters, while animals at Crandon Park Zoo in Key Biscayne were trucked to safety. There were sudden shortages of candles and flashlights and other household items...
Despite the danger, some Floridians greeted the storm with abandon, holding hurricane parties in Miami, Key West and other resorts. Part of the come-what-may attitude may have been a result of the complacency that civil defense' officials say has grown in the 14 years since southern Florida's last major hurricane, in 1965. In coastal Dade County, the population has increased almost 55% since then, and an estimated 80% of the 1.7 million residents have never lived through a big storm...
While Dade County has one of the strictest building codes in the nation, requiring that buildings be capable of withstanding 120-m.p.h. winds, it offers no safeguards against storm "surges," the walls of water a hurricane pushes in front of it. And building codes elsewhere are less strict. The risk to life and property, say officials, is still considerable despite giant leaps in the art of weather forecasting. Such is the wildly unpredictable nature of hurricanes that the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables gives itself a 100-mile margin of error on a 24-hour forecast...