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Posted
on Sun, Aug. 25, 2002 ''Look how beautiful that fallen tree is,'' Lenia Frejo, 37, told her sons Christian, 5, and Lucas, 3, teaching a lesson in rejuvenation. ``You can see the scars, but things have grown over them.'' Ten years ago Saturday, Hurricane Andrew tore through South Miami-Dade, leaving fallen homes and uprooted lives in its wake. But in Andrew's devastation there also was opportunity -- to rebuild, to restart, to refresh. Perhaps nowhere is Andrew's awesome power of destruction -- and rejuvenation -- on better display than at the Parrot Jungle, the South Dade attraction that will move next year from its aging 1936 home to a new site on Watson Island. Though no parrots died, the park sustained $4.75 million in damage -- and reopened in three weeks. Throughout the park, evidence of Andrew persists, from the unnatural curves of an Areca palm to the sections of walkway that are still closed. Steel ropes support unsteady trees, and steel girders hold up toppled ones. But just as one splintered cypress has grown over the iron bolts that hold it together, the park -- and the community -- have built around scars that will never fully heal. ''Look deep into any area and you'll see things toppled,'' said Emily Marquez-Dulin, the attraction's marketing director. ``Andrew is everywhere. You see the integration of disaster into every piece of the jungle.'' And everywhere, new possibilities bloom. One Madagascar palm, planted the fall after Andrew struck, is bearing a cone of maroon fruit in front of the original coral rock entrance to the park. After it releases its seeds, the palm will die. The park started using wider, curved paths after the storm and stopped using pesticides, fungicides and miticides in favor of mulch. After the hurricane, longtime director of horticulture Jeff Shimonski and his crew set to patching Parrot Jungle's punctured tree canopy using fast-growing plants. That success planted the seed for the current transplant. After the village of Pinecrest rejected plans for an expansion and renovation of the current park, Shimonski and owner Bernard Levine saw possibility in barren Watson Island just north of the Port of Miami-Dade. The current site will become a village park. ''This new project is a really good analogy to Andrew because here we also have to start from scratch,'' said Shimonski, 45, covered in dust, as he supervised the planting of a ficus on Watson Island. ``Andrew was the testing ground where all these ideas came together.'' Evidence of lessons learned from Andrew abound at the new site, set to open next spring. A vine canopy has started to grow along wire mesh supported by 23-foot telephone poles, an idea first used to rebuild the backdrop of Flamingo Lake, one of Florida's most famous vistas. When Parrot Jungle's central banyan lost half its branches, Shimonski used an experimental technique to speed its growth. He covered its hanging roots in burlap socks then anchored them to compost heaps once they reached the ground. The banyan bloomed. He is using the same strategy for two Watson Island banyans, and the burlap-covered roots have grown several times faster than uncovered ones. Parrot Jungle is geared for children born after Andrew, and most toddlers don't notice the park's unhealed scars. But on Saturday, their parents noticed. ''Even today,
you look across the park and you see the steel ropes holding the trees
up,'' said Nancy Causey, 39, who visited the attraction with her 7-year-old
daughter Brianna. ``Hurricane Andrew was bigger than all of us. It's not
just plants that are fragile. We are, too.''
Contact:
Jeff Shimonski
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