On 24 August 1992, Andrew came ashore across south Miami-Dade and took roofs off houses that had lost their garage doors first. The building code that governs every door installed here since then is a direct consequence of that morning, and its anniversary lands in the week the Atlantic season starts to get serious.
The five checks are the bottom seal, the lift cables where they meet the drums, the bottom brackets, the safety reversal, and the paperwork proving what your door is rated for. Four of them take twenty minutes with a torch; the fifth is the one that matters when an adjuster or a buyer asks, and it is the one nobody has ready.
| Season opens | 1 June |
|---|---|
| Statistical peak of activity | Around 10 September |
| Busiest stretch in this trade | August to October |
| Season closes | 30 November |
| Andrew makes landfall in south Miami-Dade | 24 August 1992 |
10 Sept
statistical peak of the Atlantic season
20 min
for the four physical checks, with a torch
1992
the storm that produced today's approval regime
Questions this raises
- Is it too late in the season to have a door replaced?
- It depends far less on the calendar than on the model. A common width in a standard finish can be fitted within days; a specified color or an uncommon size is a factory order, and that queue lengthens sharply the week a storm gets a name. The honest answer is to ask for the lead time in writing before paying a deposit.
- What should I photograph before a storm arrives?
- The approval label inside the door, the full face of the door from the driveway, and the anchors at the bottom of each vertical track. Those three images are what turns a later claim from a conversation into a file, and they take under a minute.
- Does parking a car against the door help?
- No, and it is a persistent piece of neighborhood advice. The load is spread across the whole panel area, not concentrated where a bumper touches, and the failure is usually outward suction rather than inward pressure — a car parked inside does nothing about that, while blocking the way out.
- My door is not rated. Is there anything useful I can do now?
- Bracing an existing door buys resistance to wind pressure and gives no impact rating at all, so it is a seasonal measure rather than a code upgrade — useful, limited, and worth doing only if the kit is approved for your door model and anchored properly into slab and header.
Sources
- National Hurricane Center (NOAA)
- Miami-Dade County — Product Control and Permitting
- Florida Building Commission — Product Approval