In California and other earthquake-prone regions in America, buildings are built to withstand earthquakes. But time after time after a hurricane we see acres of devastated houses. So why not build the houses to be hurricane-proof?
They do, or the inspection departments try to make them do it.
Basically, the homes are tied together with strapping and/or plates from the roof to the foundation, walls are made out of either reinforced block or heavier sheating, and the roof is sheathed with plywood which is attached with more nails. But some builders still cut corners and inspectors miss things, and it’s still hard to keep a building together when it’s getting hammered with surf or when a 100mph-plus wind blows through a broken window.
Here’s the website of the Florida Building Commission, created to upgrade building codes after Hurricane Andrew.
To be truly proof against a worst-case hurricane, you’d pretty much need to build underground. No normal building can endure sustained 150-kt winds unscathed.
Better building codes could shrink the areas of severe damage. But there’s no way to shrug off a Cat-5 storm.
Proper strapping would help a lot, but many builders cut corners and skimp, so the wind and rain blows under the roof and into the house.
You can always build a dome too.
In Florida, within a certain distance of the coast, the ground floor of new homes is basically stilts for the upper floors. You can use it for parking and storage, but no living quarters. You can build walls between the stilts, but they must be intentionally flimsy enough to blow right through under storm surge conditions. That way, a surge won’t take down the whole house. Also, within a certain distance from the coast you must have high-strength glass.
Homes built before these rules are grandfathered in, and a lot of folks buy a little pre-reg house and expand it, exempt from the rules.
Hurricane Andrew prompted Florida to not only tighten up building codes but also actually enforce them. One of the interesting results of these long-overdue actions were seen after last summer’s hurricanes: Houses built after Andrew were (generally) relatively all right, while houses built between roughly 1970 and 1992 were (generally) destroyed or heavily damaged; houses built prior to the 1970s were a mixed bag depending on original construction and upkeep.
Except for roofs (there has to be a better roofing material for hurricane zones than asphalt shingles, don’t you think?), modern houses actually stand up pretty well to hurricanes, especially if they have hurricane shutters. All those wrecked houses you see on the news, in most cases, simply weren’t built up to current codes.
Note that if you saw any destroyed mobile homes on TV, those are not covered under any of these building codes. They can be built to much looser standards. People understand that they will probably be destroyed in a hurricane, but many people cannot afford anything better, so they have to take their chances.
This maybe a bit OT, but even if my house was built to standard and somehow survived a Cat-5 Hurricane, I wouldn’t feel comfortable being the only person returning to the surrounding wreckage. I couldn’t live there.
With all the flooding caused by hurricanes, underground does not sound safer.
Not even to laugh at all those losers?
(Further proof you are a nicer person than I am.)
Why not?
To elaborate on what chique mentioned – many structures destroyed by Katrina yesterday had stood for decades, even from last century, and survived earlier ‘canes. And a lot of such old strutures have survived Katrina, though battered. Essentially, before the big suburbia boom, people in the hurricane belt who could afford a finely-crafted home, got a home that could handle most hurricanes, up to Cat 2 or 3 winds, as long as the flood was not too high. But there’s only so much a structure can take.
What you’re looking for is hurricane (or earthquake) resistant structures, that allow you to survive and rebuild most of the time. Making them hurricane proof is onerous both economically and in terms of useability. And you really have to remember that on the coast, it’s not just the wind, it’s also the storm surge. Cat 4 or above wind PLUS 20’ storm surge, we’re talking a power that can lift up entire commercial buildings off their foundations and throw them across the street. To make something Cat-5-proof would require you to have something on the league of this, rather unsuited for a house or a school or a shopping mall.
Don’t forget, if a hurricane passes through a city and every building but one remains perfectly unscathed, every media outlet will exclusively shoot that one house with very tight cropping while talking about “extensive damage”.
Eloquently put.