The following contains MINOR spoilers for the first season of "Invasion."

Real-life inspiration from his family is helping Shaun Cassidy, creator and executive producer of ABC's "Invasion," according to SciFi Wire.

"There have been numerous disasters of late, and yet a lot of us are still here, and we don't know what the ramifications really are yet," said Cassidy, who also was responsible for the cult-favorite show, "American Gothic." "That's the universe our show is set in. And it's also personal for me. My wife is from Homestead, Florida. She went through Hurricane Andrew."

Cassidy said that Andrew, the devastating hurricane that struck the Sunshine State in 1992, was part of the inspiration for "Invasion" long before Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Cassidy's wife, a senior in high school when Andrew hit, went for months without electricity. Her perceptions of how a disaster impacts a community helped flesh out his approach to the new ABC show.

The former star of "The Hardy Boys Mysteries" sees an eerie resemblance between his show and what's happening in real life with Katrina.

"Invasion" is "a show about a family and community in recovery, post-hurricane, and a lot of people are traumatized by the initial event," he said. "It's really the aftermath that is the breeding ground for ongoing mysteries. Aberrant behavior in the population, changes in the population initially are attributed to the trauma as a result of the hurricane."

The hurricane that kicks off the show will force the small Florida town that's the focus of the series to be quarantined "because of the stuff released from the hospital, and there are bodies missing," said Cassidy, who intends to keep each episode as scientifically accurate as possible. "They don't know what the state of the water is. It serves to isolate a lot of these people, and there may be darker forces at work here. The sheriff seems to have another agenda beyond just protecting this community. He may want his community and the people to survive, but he may want certain things to survive more than others."

ABC, which had initially stopped running promotional ads for "Invasion" after Hurricane Katrina's devastating aftermath, reportedly will continue with their plans to air the series after "Lost" on Wednesday evenings. Both shows will premiere, as planned, on Wednesday, September 21, with "Lost" at 9, followed by "Invasion" at 10 p.m. ET/PT.