Today is the 80th anniversary of the 1926 Great Miami Hurricane, a storm of unimaginable destruction that virtually wiped out Miami Beach and threw Miami and the surrounding areas into a depression three years ahead of the rest of the country.

There had not been a hurricane since 1910, when Miami was in its infancy, but by 1920 Carl Fisher had turned Miami Beach from a mangrove swamp into a well-laid out young city with great weather, gambling, a free-wheeling spirit to suit the needs of Prohibition, and a very, very speculative atmosphere. The population of Miami had swelled ten-fold to 200,000 with very few every having experience a storm. On the night of the 17th a warning was issued from Washington, D.C. that a very large hurricane was coming, but most of the residents had gone to bed by then, and the storm struck at 2am..

You don’t see many buildings that date before 1926 on Miami Beach. A fifteen foot storm surge washed over the island and took most everything with it. About 300 people were killed and another 800 just disappeared. When South Beach was put back together it was all within the same years and is the reason for the homogenous, Deco look.

The effects of a similar storm today on Miami would be stupefying with an estimated 80 billion dollars in damage that would bring down not only the economy, but most of the insurance companies. The survivors would live for months without electricity and would force the migration north of hundreds of thousands.

Today there is a similar spirit to 1926. Speculation in real estate is out of control and teetering on collapse, a free-wheeling spirit still persists with the authorities looking the other way for a cut, and millions want to live in the sun, on the ocean. Everyone knows that it is just a matter of time.