Roofers From Hell

By CATHY BOOTH/KEY LARGO

By day they rebuild homes wrecked by Hurricane Andrew. By night they drink, fight, smoke crack and sometimes kill. In the squalid roadside camps they call home, shotguns and 9-mm pistols abound, as do the tools of their trade: roofing knives. In one case a roofer's throat was cut so deeply he was nearly decapitated. In another a roofer shot and stabbed a drifter 100 times. Soldiers who patrolled the area say they saw a roofer bite off another man's ear, then spit it out.

The cops call them "the roofers from hell." Lured by the promise of quick money in the wake of Hurricane Andrew, thousands have traveled from South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, even as far away as New Jersey and Michigan. Most seek honest work, but with them came a crime wave of burglaries, robberies, stabbings and drunk-driving fatalities. Even in once quiet tourist spots like Key Largo, violent crimes are up. "The entire environment has changed because of them," says Captain Joe Leiter of the Key Largo sheriff's office. "Six armed robberies in one month is totally unheard of in our little paradise."

The most dangerous places are the squalid camps where roofers and construction workers live. With 270 sq. mi. of destruction and few hotels in the disaster zone, 5,000 to 10,000 itinerant workers and locals now live in these makeshift tent cities, according to estimates by Dade County officials. Mike Anelli, a 28-year-old carpenter from New Jersey who has set up camp near the destroyed Homestead Air Force Base, says he wakes nightly to the sound of gunfire. "It's like a Mad Max movie after a nuclear war, what with the fires at night, the rusted heaps of cars and all the fighting here," he says.

Camp Hell is the most notorious encampment. About 150 people live there, sleeping in battered trucks, under leaky plastic tarps, in tents pitched by piles of gelatinous garbage and broken beer bottles. The men wash in a , contaminated canal nearby, some lathering up naked by the roadside. Police found a roofer shot in the face and left to die within yards of the camp; a dead body was found floating in a canal not far away. "The price of life around here is less than a 12-pack of beer," says Estes, a 34-year-old woman from Indiana who lives in the camp with her roofer husband.

Drug dealers fuel the violence. Even when food and water were hard to come by in the weeks after Hurricane Andrew, crack and pot were readily available. One Florida City dealer, flush with a supply of 5,000 nickel bags, was selling marijuana "like a McDonald's drive-through, even taking tools in trade for drugs," says local police sergeant Gail Bowen.

The sheer size of South Florida's devastation makes the area an ideal place to hide from the law. Last month police picked up an escaped child rapist working as a roofer. Many workers admit they don't want to give their names to reporters for fear of tipping off police back home. One Atlanta roofer confided that he came to hide from courts seeking 12 years' worth of child support. "It's a good place," he said, "to make money without anybody asking a lot of questions."

With electricity still out, most homes empty and phones out of order in many neighborhoods, the locals have been arming themselves against the influx of thieves. Cynthia Hitt's husband bought her a .22-cal. pistol for Christmas; she bought him a .30-30 rifle. "What if something happens? You can't scream for a neighbor, and until recently there weren't any phones to call the cops," she says.

The roofers claim they are getting a raw deal from the locals. "There are plenty of good guys down here working," says Michigan roofer Chester Steele, a Vietnam veteran who serves as unofficial mayor and peace enforcer in Camp Hell. He contends that workers get ripped off by trailer parks (typical charge: $800 a month for a 1950s-era trailer) and hotels ($55 a day for a room without TV or hot water). Contractors regularly skip out on them, leaving them without pay.

Without savings to go home, the workers are stuck living in conditions reminiscent of The Grapes of Wrath. Douglas Davis, a 35-year-old carpenter from Pennsylvania, is living in his aging Scout van at Camp Mad Max because he can't afford a hotel. Thieves have taken his car battery, his radio, his tools, even his Penn State floor mats. His body is covered with infected mosquito bites. On his back, an antibiotic cream covers a patch of ringworm. ; Asked if he has seen a doctor, he says he cured himself by "sanding" down the skin and washing it with Clorox.

Police have increased patrols and pay special attention to convenience stores and gas stations, but recent court rulings prevent Metro-Dade police from rousting the homeless from their makeshift camps. Until construction workers finish rebuilding South Dade, a process that could take years, police are resigned to battling wave after wave of troublemakers. "We're just waiting now for the plasterers from hell and the electricians from hell," says Cory Bryan, a detective in the Keys. "With our nice climate, they may never leave."