The Nome daily nugget., 1936-04-25

called longer than three months, four at the most. During the remaining eight, or nine months all these hotels are vacant There i absolutely no rev enue for maintenan cost. taxes, in- surance and the dozens of other ex- penses such project entais.'
 Beside ne. Col Joe Tucker chuckled at some memory my words revived. The colonel and are friends of long standing. Today we were seated on the veranda of his winter home at Miami beach looking out over |; brassy sea, overshadowed by a leaden, cloud less sky. It was early May. The tour ist season was past. An atmosphere of desclation and forlornness hung over the city.
 The day was hot. though the mer- cury was considerably less than the average northerner is apt to think of it being in Florida. between May and November A gentle breeze swept up from the water, and was cooled in the shade of palm trees and oeanders be- fore reaching the veranda To the right the top stories of the famous Beach hotel were visible above fringe of cocoanut palms. It was sight of this man-made structure that had prompted my remark, for Boris Flake, its owner, is a close friend of the col onel, hence one with whom I am in- clined to sympathize.
 Colonel Tuck set fire to a long black cigar and crossed his legs atop the veranda railing.
 Rack in 192G," he said "the city of Miami was nearly wiped off the map by hurricane. You remember it. Worst storm on record. Hundreds of buildings whisked away as If they had been so many cardboard boxes. Thou sands of dollars worth of property ut terly ruined. The extent of the dam age reached an astounding figure.
 Tt was setback to Miami and ad- jacent cities. It meant years of work to rebuild what had been destroyed And worse still It meant the greater undertaking of dispelling in the minds of outsiders, who had been in the habit of coming to Florida during the winter, the idea that such a storm was apt to repeat itself during the tourist season. Even now your northern pa pers announce that Miami Is being swept by hurricane every time the wind blows at a slightly greater than normal velocity. Up In New England you can have high tides, blizza rds and 100 mile-an-hour gales and they'll nev- CT be called any more than a bad storm.
 However, Miami was confronted with the job of overcoming the hur- ricane hazard. She had to convince you northerners that there was a sea- son for hurricanes and that season be- gan in late August, and ended in late October. And, second, she had to do something to assure the folks who sometimes stayed down here during the summer months, that in the event of a second storm such as that in 1926 there were shelters that could withstand the ravages
 Boris Flake built the first hurri- cane-proof hotel. (And incidentally there haven't been many built since) It cost him thousands of dollars, in fact several thousand more than he had anticipated. When the thing was done he discovered his finances ex- hausted and his creditors pressing Hopeful of realizing profit on his in vestment, however, he held on during the winter season of 1927, only 10 dis cover that either the storm of the previous year had careC off the tour ist trade, or Miami wasn't going to be the popular winter resort that natives had bragged about. At any rate busi ness wasn't so brisk that winter and by the end of the season his financial condition hadn't improved to any marked degree.
 "The outlook seemed pretty black. Boris decided to stay on the ground during the summer, however and spend his idle time in concocting some plan whereby he could retrieve some of his investment. An old hand at the hotel game is Boris; thoughts of admitting defeat were too humiliating to be considered.
 During August of that summer Boris got break Weather authori- ties predicted that hurricane of great velocity was making up in the Caribbean and was heading straight for Miami. The report got around that the city was again doomed. Govern ment officials advised every one to either get out of the city or take shel- ter in some building that could with