By Paula Day

"When Hugo hit, I thought, 'Oh, those poor people.' Now it's happened to me. I'm still numb."

Kate Thorpe sat in the living room of a Jonesboro friend and recounted her odyssey, a last-minute flight from Hurricane Andrew with her 81-year-old father and three children. Mrs. Thorpe's plight was complicated because she had been out of the hospital only three weeks after intensive chemotherapy and stem-cell treatment, a process in which a person's own previously frozen bone marrow is implanted after diseased marrow is destroyed.

The treatment had left her immune system weakened and vulnerable to disease. Even if Andrew didn't directly hit the Cutler Ridge area in unincorporated Dade County where the family lives, expected power outages and possible water supply contamination would heighten her risk.

Cutler Ridge is 10 miles north of Homestead, Fla. and five miles east of Homestead Air Force Base. Both received the full brunt of the storm.

A former parishioner of St. Philip Benizi parish in Jonesboro, Mrs. Thorpe has many friends in the Atlanta area. Susie Lackey, whom she sponsored as an RCIA candidate, offered her a place to stay. She will have access to the oncology unity of Emory University Hospital.

The decision to leave was a last minute one. Until Saturday, Aug. 22, forecasters were predicting the storm would hit farther south in the Florida Keys area.

The Thorpes worked until the early hours of Sunday preparing their home for the hurricane. At 2 a.m. they realized the seriousness of the situation when Mrs. Thorpe's husband Brian, a fireman and paramedic for the Miami Beach fire department, returned for a few hour's sleep.

An evacuation of the whole area had been ordered. Those who wouldn't leave were asked to give the name of their next-of-kin to notify in the event of death.

Mrs. Thorpe gave each of the three children one suitcase and said, "Here, put in the clothes you can and let's go." Ten-year-old Katie slipped in her teddy bear.

A friend drove the family van, part of a three-car caravan of people coming to the Atlanta area. In addition to Frank Witt, Mrs. Thorpe's 81-year-old father, and her children, Blaize, 12, Katie, 10, and Patrick, 8, the passengers included four other children, a baby and a pregnant woman. Brian Thorpe, because of his work, stayed behind.

Normally a four-hour drive, the trip to Orlando took eight hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Even with the two-lane highway made into four by use of emergency lanes, the caravan crept along at less than 25 miles an hour. Along the way, Floridians were uprooting plywood election signs to use in boarding up their homes. The spikes could become dangerous weapons during the storm.

The group had hoped to find lodging in Orlando but were told there were "no hotel rooms in the state of Florida." At 3 a.m. Monday, they found a place to rest in Moultrie, GA.

Since the storm, Mrs. Thorpe has been in regular touch with her husband. He missed being seriously injured during the storm's height when the front door blew in.

"I knew what sheer terror was," he recalled. The front and large back porch and a third of the roof were blown off -- "not anywhere in sight," Thorpe reported.

As hurricanes do, Andrew performed freakish tricks. A rifle is still hanging in its place, just inches beneath the ripped-off roof. A china cupboard from the 1800s with glass shelves, crystal cutware and treasured china was untouched, while a piece of corrugated sheetmetal blown in by the storm lay crumpled nearby. Andrew left a silver tea service filled with twigs and rainwater for the returnees.

While their home is still standing, Thorpe told his wife other houses in the neighborhood looked "like piles of toothpicks."

"I don't know if any of the kid's pictures are left," Mrs. Thorpe said. "Houses and furniture can be replaced, people can't. I worry about my friends. I haven't heard of anyone killed yet. I guess that's why I cry. I'm worried about them."

There are no stores. The Homestead bank's main branch was destroyed. Kate Thorpe has mailed mortgage and car insurance payments, but is not paying local bills. Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in Perrine, Fla., where the children go to school is destroyed. The family can return to Hollywood, Fla., and live in a condominium left to them by Thorpe's mother. Mrs. Thorpe's father will go to live in a nursing home in North Carolina close to his brother.

"I don't know what we're going to find," Mrs. Thorpe says. "It's going to take years to rebuild. I just know I could not have made it through this experience without my faith."

Mrs. Thorpe was active in St. Philip Benizi parish when she was a parishioner, taking a leading role in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults program. Her husband is president of the Home and School Association of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary School.