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Hurricane Resistant Homes on Texas Coast Survive Ike's Worst
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19 Comments ::  :: Gulf Coast, Real Estate |
Hurricane Resistant Homes on the Texas Coast Survive Ike's Worst
 Almost all the hurricane resistant homes at Audubon Village in Gilchrist, survived Hurricane Ike's worst damage. The rest of Gilchrist was completely destroyed.
We now have actual proof that this type of new construction works.
These homes were built to the fortified for safer living® designation from the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS). This construction program ensures a home meets specific design, construction and landscaping criteria to increase its overall resistance to natural hazards such as hurricane winds and flood waters.
These homes were designated using the original Fortified criteria. Under the new land use policies IBHS would not designate homes in this area.
IBHS created the "Fortified…for safer living" construction program to ensure a home meets specific design, construction and landscaping criteria to increase its overall resistance to natural hazards.
Audubon Village is located 1.5 miles east of Rollover Pass in the city of Gilchrist on the Bolivar Peninsula, the location where Hurricane Ike hit the hardest and caused the most damage. Yet, nearly everyone of these homes still stands proud.
Look at this FEMA report after Hurricane Andrew, where a Government study observed that this type of construction survives hurricane damage far better than traditional construction techniques.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) report on building performance during 1992’s Hurricane Andrew noted that modular homes withstood the ravages of that storm’s Category 4 winds of 131–155 mph far better than site-built housing.
FEMA states these homes “provided an inherently rigid system that performed much better than conventional residential framing.”
With this example - it is clear that if we are going to build on the coast, let's do it right and make our homes survivable and safer.
For more information on these types of homes, see our section on System Built Homes.
Another construction technique that also proved itself during Hurricane Ike,
was the Galveston Seawall and raised modern high-rise construction behind it.
The Emerald By the Sea in Galveston, is one of the few structures where there was literally no damage from the storm.
Emerald By the Sea is already completely operational with power, water and ready for residents to move right back in as soon as Galveston re-opens next week.
Sales Management company Edith Personette & Associates and Alan Chodrow of the Galveston Center, say that they are seeing a surge of calls from locals and from other areas of the country, interested in the Emerald for sales and rentals.
"Many of the new buyers and renters had homes that were lost and are looking for a safer way of living on the coast" - said Alan Chodrow.
Several items that both of these hurricane resistant designs had in common:
1. They are several hundred feet from the beach
2. They have a rigid barrier between the sand and the structures
3. They are built to much higher construction standards, specifically to withstand hurricane forces
4. They are elevated high off the ground with concrete and steel
See related article on " New Beach Construction and Dune Protection Permit Rules"
All the finished communities in our "rare and remarkable new developments" on the the Texas coast suffered only minor damage, if any, from hurricane Ike.
NOTE: The Majority of the Texas Coast including the Matagorda Bay Area, Port O'Connor, Rockport, Port Aransas, Corpus Christi and South Padre Island - experienced few effects from Hurricane Ike - and are open and ready for visitors.
Several Communities where Hurricane Resistant System Built Homes are available by Inova Homes:
Updated Photo From Jim Hayes, Crown Team Partner
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By
Galveston Daily News @
Saturday, September 20, 2008 | |
The city announced Saturday, September 20th 2008, that residents who live behind the Seawall will be allowed to re-enter Galveston at 6 a.m. Wednesday. |
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ByIBHS Storm Activities/Storm Research @
Saturday, September 20, 2008 |
Hurricane Ike - Still Standing
The Institute for Business & Home Safety’s involvement in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike continues.The following are the latest updates.
* IBHS Chief Engineer and Senior Vice President Dr. Tim Reinhold decided not to deploy the Post Disaster Investigation Team after spending two days conducting preliminary damage assessments in Galveston, Houston and the surrounding areas. The majority of damage was limited to roof coverings, rather than sheathing, and a widespread investigation was not warranted.
* Good news has emerged from Bolivar Peninsula where IBHS designated a total of 17 Fortified...for safer living® homes, four in Port Bolivar and 13 in Gilchrist, Texas. All but three of the Gilchrist homes survived, and those three were damaged when neighboring houses were washed off their foundations and slammed into the Fortified homes. These homes were designated using the original Fortified criteria. While we certainly encourage everyone to build to our code-plus construction standards, under the new land use policies IBHS would not designate homes in this area.
Dr. Reinhold and Fortified Program Manager Rem Brown are traveling to Bolivar to survey the homes and to meet with members of Crown Team Texas, which was the company building homes in Audubon Village to the Fortified standard. The Associated Press video news report below reveals the stark contrast found on Bolivar Peninsula now. The Fortified houses are all that remaining standing in Gilchrist.
* IBHS engineers are continuing to analyze high-resolution aerial and ground photography images to determine the percentages of roof damage. A report is forthcoming later this year. |
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By
Zillow @
Sunday, September 21, 2008 |
A Systems Built Modular Home is a type of house which is built in a climate controlled factory, in a series of components, shipped to the customer's homesite, and set by a crane on a foundation or pilings.
A Modular Home is not a trailer or a manufactured home, and with the recent advances in building technology it is difficult to tell the difference between a site-built and a modular home.
Modular Homes are 85% completed in the factory, leaving minor electrical, plumbing, and carpentry work to be completed once it is set. Meaning that items such as, hardwood floors, carpeting, tile, walls, ceilings, light fixtures, bathroom sinks, toilets, vanities, kitchen cabinets, staircases, doors, plumbing for bathrooms, & kitchens, wiring for lights, switches, outlets, telephone, cable & ethernet jacks, windows, roof and many other items are already built, and installed in the house before it leaves the factory.
Advantages of Modular Homes
* Will not be exposed to inclement weather during the construction process
* Built with 33% more wood than a site built home
* Built with a higher quality craftsmanship than site-built homes due to quality control checks throughout the factory
* Usually lower in price than a site-built home
* Home can be completed in as little as four months
* Retain their value much longer than a site-built home
* Very Energy Efficient, due to the amount of material used for construction, as well as the quality of construction which each home has
Some Myths about Modular Homes
* Modulars are all one-story. Modular Homes can be one, two, and sometimes three or more stories high, in addition, a modular can be constructed as a ranch, bi-level/split-level, colonial, victorian, cape and almost any other home style.
* Modular Homes can only be built in an "box" shape. Modular Homes can be built in almost any shape, can have dormers, egresses, or ingresses, or - if you want - it can be built like a box.
* A Modular Home is not a well built home. Modular Homes are built in a climate controlled environment and wrapped in plastic once it leaves the factory - ensuring that inclement weather will not warp, rot, or otherwise damage the interior or exterior of the home. Plus, modulars are delivered to the home site with no damage while being transported at speeds of up to 75 mph; if a modular was not well built, it would be falling apart by the time it arrives at the homesite. In addition, throughout the manufacturing process, each home is inspected multiple times by in-house quality control teams and third-party inspection agencies. If there is a problem found at any one of those insepctions, it is immediately corrected. Not too many site-built homes can attest to that type of quality control.
* A Modular is more expensive or less expensive than a site built home. Depending on what you put in the modular home, or how much customization is put into the home, a modular may be more expensive or less expensive than a site-built home. It is true that most modular homes are less expensive than a comparable site-built home, but no matter what, even a poorly built modular is built better than a site-built home.
* Modular Homes are Trailer Homes. The only similarity between a trailer home and today's modular homes are the fact that both are built in a climate controlled factory environment.
* Modular Homes need special permits to be built. In most areas of the United States, a modular home can be built anywhere a site-built home can be built without any special permits or variances.
If Modulars are such great houses. Why are site-built houses still more popular?
Even though modular homes have been made and sold for decades, it wasn't until the mid-90's that advances in technology allowed modular homes to advance from the boxy, one-story home, into a fully customizable home with finishes and an appearance that rivals any site-built home.
Many people still have the wrong impression of Modular Homes in their mind, and are not aware as to how far they have come.
Today's Modular Homes can be built in almost any size and configuration, ranging from under 1,000 square feet to tens of thousands of square feet. |
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By
NG Texas State Climatologist; Professor of Meteorology @
Sunday, September 21, 2008 |
Now that we've experienced Ike, what about The Big One?
Southeast Texas is in the midst of a massive recovery operation in the aftermath of Ike. People will learn many lessons from this storm. Some of those lessons will be right, and some will be wrong.
(9-21-08: see below for an update)
Lesson #1: Now we finally realize how bad a hurricane can be.
WRONG.
Ike was "only" a Category 2 hurricane. Hurricanes can get much, much worse. The 1900 Galveston hurricane, for example, was a Category 4. Consider the wind damage in your area, and then consider what would have happened had the winds been THREE TIMES more powerful. That's the difference between a Cat 2 and a Cat 4. And Cat 4's are unusual, but inevitable. If Ike hadn't spent so much time over Cuba, we probably would have had a Cat 4 last week.
It's harder to imagine the storm surge from a Cat 4. The best thing to do is take the elevation of the land around your house and subtract it from 25 feet. If you've got something left, that's how far under water you'd be. If the land slopes toward the Gulf of Mexico, add ten feet of waves to that. If the land is on a barrier island, imagine that all that water is moving like a river.
Lesson #2: No home can survive the full wrath of a hurricane.
TRUE.
In before and after pictures of the Bolivar Peninsula, it is easy to tell the newer homes from the older homes. Many times, the new homes survived while the old homes were washed away. Clearly, if you want to build a home to survive the passage of a hurricane, you can do so.
But what's the point if the roads all get washed away, the power is cut off, and the mold has a three-month head start on you? Not only does the house need to be resilient, but so does the community. Until we have hurricane-resistent electricity and water supplies, the strongest house in the world won't survive the aftermath of a hurricane.
Lesson #3: We can't wait until a strike is imminent before evacuating.
TRUE.
You can pay the price of living in a hurricane surge zone two ways: by evacuating five times safely, or by staying put five times and having one of those five be either the worst night of your life and the last night of your life for you and your family. Those are the choices. You can't evacuate only when necessary, because you don't know when it'll be necessary until it's too late.
We need to do a better job with surge forecasting, too. The range of uncertainty presently attached to surge forecasts, such as "18-22 feet", is misleading. It incorporates the errors in the surge model, but doesn't incorporate the errors in the hurricane forecast. Also, a single peak number doesn't cut it. People need to know how rapidly the water will rise, and when evacuation will become impossible. Like it or not, folks are not trusting government officials to make life-or-death decisions for them, so we must give them the critical information. How many lives would have been saved if people knew that the road from Bolivar Peninsula would become impassible on Friday morning?
Lesson #4: We still don't have an acceptible evacuation plan.
TRUE.
Actually, the evacuation itself went fairly well. But not enough people evacuated, and those that did evacuate are suffering more hardship in the aftermath than those who didn't evacuate. It seems that we are actively discouraging people from evacuating, by keeping them away from their homes while those that didn't evacuate get to stay there, at least temporarily. People will likely conclude that they can protect their homes much better during and after a hurricane by staying rather than leaving. The evacuation plan must make it more desirable to leave than to stay, by catering to the needs of those who do leave.
Many of those who did not evacuate could not afford to evacuate. Let's face it, it's much cheaper to stay put than to leave. We need to establish a viable option for them. Could there be a Hurricane Partners program, whereby each limited-means family in a potential evacuation zone is matched with a partner family safely away from the coast? I would have been happy to drive down to Galveston and take someone out. There are massive logistical issues with this, but if there were an easy way, we'd be doing it by now.
Lesson #5: Next time, we'll evacuate sooner.
FALSE.
The odds are that the next major hurricane to strike Texas will form right here in the Gulf of Mexico. None of this 120-hour plan stuff; we'll be lucky if we have 72 hours of warning. Public officials and the general public had better not get used to the idea, gained from recent experience, that we'll see the next hurricane coming from a mile (or 1000 miles) away. Also, people have started forming plans on what they'll do if it's a cat 2, or a cat 3, or a cat 4, but be prepared for the actual hurricane to be one or two categories different (either up or down) from what's being forecasted three days in advance.
My guess is that you won't be able to evacuate soon, because the next storm might not even exist three days before it makes landfall.
Update: Wind Force, Storm Surge, Saffir-Simpson, LocationLocationLocation, and Rubbing It In
In response to comments through Saturday, a few clarifications and additions:
Wind Force
Many readers have taken me to task for saying that a Category 4 hurricane is three times more powerful than a Category 2. Ike was 110 mph, three times that is 330 mph, way beyond Cat 4.
That much is true, but I said "more powerful". The destructive power of the wind depends on the force the wind applies to obstacles such as trees, roofs, and walls. This force is not proportional to the wind speed, but rather to the cube of the wind speed.
Here's my math: Ike, a high-end Cat 2 with estimated 110 mph winds (the actual wind speed is a different topic), had a destructive power proportional to 110 x 110 x 110, or 1,331,000. A high-end Cat 4 would have winds of 155 mph, for a destructive power of 155 x 155 x 155, or 3,723,875. This power is roughly three times the power of Ike.
It gets worse. Damage is not proportional to the wind force, but goes up almost exponentially as the force of the wind increases. Say you lost a patch of roof with Ike. If the power of the wind had been three times as strong, you wouldn't have lost three patches of roof, you would have lost the whole thing, and probably more besides.
Storm Surge
A team led by the Army Corps of Engineers is more than halfway through an effort to update the storm surge risks along the Texas coast. This was too late to be useful for Ike, and in particular to be useful for new construction that was in the path of Ike, but at least Ike will provide an excellent data set for testing and improving the storm surge models.
Ike had a storm surge typical of a Category 4 hurricane because of its unusual size. The same goes for Katrina, which produced a Category 5 storm surge along the Mississippi coast even though it was a Cat 3 at landfall. Ike's broad size also contributed to the widespread nature of the power outages.
The issue with conveying information regarding storm surge forecasts, as I see it, is that uncertainty cannot be conveyed in sound bites. A (typical) forecast of 14'-18' understates the uncertainty, but people are going to hear "storm surge could be as high as 18 feet". No, it could be even higher, but it will probably be lower. Meteorologists are desperately grappling with the issue of how to properly convey the uncertainty of forecasts to the public in a way the public will understand.
I think Eric did a great job showing various storm surge scenarios. On one of his posts, he even showed an image of Jamaica Beach, depicting how far the coast had receded during Carla and Alicia. He said that Ike could be as bad as Carla there. Guess what? According to the NOAA damage photos, he nailed it.
Over on the Bolivar Peninsula, the Ike storm surge appears to have been as bad as a direct hit from an ordinary Cat 4. Elsewhere, not as bad. A lot depends on the particular location.
The Saffir-Simpson Scale
Is it time to jettison the Saffir-Simpson Scale? Clearly it oversimplifies a storm by trying to reduce it to a single number. But I think the media does a good job describing what flavor of storm we're dealing with at any given time. Everyone that I know of was emphasizing with Ike that the storm surge would be larger than would ordinarily occur with a Cat 2 or Cat 3. The Weather Channel has been describing the major source of danger with each storm, and it changes depending on the storm's characteristics.
The Saffir-Simpson Scale is an excellent starting point, and it gives people an immediate ranking tied to their experience (direct or vicarious) with other storms. Like it or not, the public understands what "a Cat 3 storm" means better than "a storm with 130 mph peak winds". I wouldn't think of getting rid of it.
LocationLocationLocation and Rubbing It In
How many times have you heard a statement like this: "I was here for (Carla, Alicia, etc...) and it wasn't so bad." Possibly with the addendum "and Carla was a Category 4". Ike was a big storm, so a lot of neighborhoods experienced Cat 1 strength winds, but a much smaller number of neighborhoods eperienced Cat 2 winds. If you didn't get directly nailed by the eyewall, don't be thinking that your home can survive any Category 2 storm just because it survived this one.
Why am I telling people it could have been worse? This is my own feeble attempt to prevent people from thinking "My home survived Ike relatively (or completely) unscathed, so now I know my home is okay in a hurricane." No. Your home is okay for a Cat 2 moving up the western shore of Galveston Bay. The next storm will follow a different path, and it may be stronger too, and I want people to understand that such a storm is outside their realm of experience.
It's a good thing Cat 4 storms are rare. It's also a good thing that Houston hasn't taken a direct hit from a Cat 4 since 1900. But it's also a bad thing. Chances are, sometime in the next 50 years or so, Houston will get its own Cat 4, and many are liable to treat it like a glorified Cat 2, because that's all they know.
It has been said that the Army trains to fight the last war, not the next one. So too with hurricanes. I bet the Houston area will be well prepared for the next time an Ike is bearing down on the coast. Unfortunately, the name "Ike" is being retired. The next storm will be different. |
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By
MIKE TOLSON and HARVEY RICE @
Sunday, September 21, 2008 |
From one end of the island to the other, developers are dreaming big.
This time the target market is not just the day-tripper from Houston but the monied class that sees the island as a resort more in line with the fancier ones along the eastern seaboard.
Over the past four years, home prices on the island have gone up almost 90 percent.
The new high-rise developments suffered little damage.
Randall Davis, a Houston-based developer who is building the Diamond Beach resort near the end of the Seawall, said even a storm as destructive as Ike did not dim his enthusiasm for an island the New York Times recently referred to as "an emerging Lone Star equivalent of the Hamptons."
"This storm does not change my vision," Davis said.
"To me ... if you are going to live on Galveston it should be behind the Seawall in a condominium built to hurricane standards that you can lock and leave.
This drives the point I've been trying to sell." |
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By
MATTHEW TRESAUGUE @
Sunday, September 21, 2008 |
The impulse to rebuild follows any catastrophe, but homeowners and public officials are facing questions of whether parts of the hurricane-ravaged Texas coastline will even be salvageable.
Hurricane Ike all but erased the communities of Gilchrist and Crystal Beach along the Bolivar Peninsula.
The Gulf of Mexico swallowed some homes along Surfside Beach. Galveston's beach disappeared along the Seawall, and coastal highways collapsed.
"We now have a graphic example of why you should build as far away from the dunes as possible," Jerry Patterson, the state's land commissioner, said Monday while flying his Cessna Skylane 182 over the region.
Limiting development
Where someone can build along the Gulf has been a war of ideology and values for years. The debate, however, intensified a few months ago after Patterson, who oversees the state's beaches, proposed new restrictions on coastline construction.
Patterson is asking local governments in the 17 coastal counties to adopt regulations that would limit development of rapidly eroding beaches.
The proposed rules call for new buildings to be set back 60 times the erosion rate, as measured from the beach's line of vegetation — so if a shoreline is eroding 6 feet each year, then construction wouldn't be allowed within 360 feet.
The state Legislature ordered the new rules last year to reduce the cost of storm damage, disaster response and erosion.
But public officials from Galveston and other coastal communities blasted the proposal, saying the rules represented a land grab by the state.
In a written response to the proposed rules, the Gilchrist Community Association asked the state: "How can a community exist without new construction?"
Patterson said the desires of those with beach property and blueprints should be considered, but nature is taking away the land through erosion, not the state.
"I've been here for Hurricane Carla in 1961 and Hurricane Alicia in 1983," he said. "Each time you lose more and more of the beach."
Restoration on hold
The latest hurricane means that the state's multimillion-dollar effort to restore beaches will be on hold, including a $13.5 million project to restore at least 3 miles of eroded Galveston beaches west of the Seawall.
Along the Bolivar Peninsula, more than 100 feet of beach disappeared in Ike's wake, with floodwaters pouring over sand socks and into neighborhoods.
After surveying the coastline by air for the second time in two days, Patterson said it's unlikely that Gilchrist would be rebuilt beyond a "beer joint and bait camp" and questioned whether Rollover Pass should be closed.
The man-made pass linking the East Bay to the Gulf is a popular fishing spot, but it has created severe erosion problems on the peninsula, Patterson said.
In Surfside Beach, the hurricane destroyed 10 of 14 houses at the center of a legal dispute involving Patterson.
The homeowners sued him even after he offered them $50,000 apiece of state money to move their houses from areas that obstructed public access to the beach. |
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By
MATTHEW TRESAUGUE @
Monday, September 22, 2008 |
There is no community of Gilchrist, at least for now. The Bolivar Peninsula hamlet exists only on maps after the storm surge of Hurricane Ike all but erased it. Beachside cottages on stilts are gone, the roads impassable.
Similarly, the hurricane devastated other spots along the Texas coast, places like Crystal Beach and Surfside Beach, paradises lost.
The impulse to rebuild will surely follow, but Ike's surge has infused the coastal development debate that has been a staple of the state's political rhetoric for decades.
Already, one week after the hurricane, some scientists, lawmakers and property owners have wondered whether an area that will likely be ravaged again is worth fixing and further developing.
"We have to protect people from themselves and certainly from developers," said Jim Blackburn, an environmental attorney and coastal expert based in Houston. "Anyone who wants to buy on the West End of Galveston Island should be shown a picture of the Bolivar Peninsula after Ike."
The reality is, the coastline is changing, and changing fast, geologists say.
While trophy houses, subdivisions and hotels have sprouted along the Gulf of Mexico, rising seas and sinking land have led to the rapid erosion of the state's shoreline. By some estimates, as much as 10 feet of beachfront washes away each year.
Hurricanes cause even more damage to fragile barrier lands, such as Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula, by raking even more sand into back-shore bays and hindering the natural accumulation of sediment on the ocean side.
As the sandy shore shifts over decades, a barrier island may look the same, but it will be farther landward. Houses that once stood hundreds of feet from the surf will be encroaching on the Gulf.
Restrictions sought
Until recently, Texas has done little to address the erosion problem along its 367 miles of mostly wild shoreline. In April, Jerry Patterson, the state's land commissioner, proposed new restrictions on coastline construction.
The state's Open Beaches Act already prohibits houses seaward of the vegetation line, which crawls steadily landward as the beaches erode.
Patterson is asking local governments in coastal counties to adopt regulations that call for new buildings to be set back 60 times the erosion rate, as measured from the beach's vegetation line. Under the rules, if the shoreline is eroding 6 feet each year, then construction wouldn't be allowed within 360 feet.
The loudest protests have come from Galveston Island and the Bolivar Peninsula.
Property owners and public officials have called the proposed rules a land grab by the state that would adversely affect local economies.
Galveston County, in particular, has seen booming growth of late, especially along the island's fashionable but low-lying West End, just beyond the reach of the protective Seawall.
The county's population is projected to reach nearly 300,000 people by 2030, up from about 200,000 in 1980.
Patterson, who oversees the Texas coastline, said his intent is not to trample on property rights, but to confront what he considers a crucial problem. In addition to the eroding shoreline, he is concerned that the high cost of rebuilding highways and pipelines and restoring beaches on barrier lands will become a perpetual burden on state taxpayers.
"Everyone is in the mode of rebuilding and recovery, but there are limits," he said after flying over the area last week. "There are a lot of places where we build close to the coast, and it might be time to rethink it."
Karen Mahoney, the Galveston City Council member who represents the West End, acknowledged that the city should take another look at setbacks after Ike washed away homes three rows from the beach. But it's too early to say how, or if, the regulations will change, she said.
"I'm sure we'll be able to look at the damage and the data and see what works and what doesn't work," Mahoney said, adding that buildings constructed under the city's most recent codes fared well in the storm. |
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ByJason Mercer @
Monday, September 22, 2008 |
INOVA Homes is a Houston based Systems-Built construction company that specializes in building "Storm-Safe Hurricane Resistant" homes along the Texa Gulf Coast. Our unique 2-step process allows us to deliver a stronger home that's made to withstand the tough conditions found in coastal counties.
INOVA constructs homes to meet the "Fortified for Safer Living" code level that has been proven as the best option for hurricane zone construction.
You may have an interest in seeing some video clips from news coverage that we received during a home's “set” process for a house we built in Galveston in 2006 (the home survived Ike, while others close by did not). The videos are on our website (www.homesbyinova.com/in_the_news.asp) but it’s easier to watch them from You Tube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79hEcew_qHQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLXK1J54nZg
If you're considering building along the coast, you owe it to yourself to explore this better methed of construction.
Should you have any questions, or want more information about the best ways to rebuild along the Coast following Ike, contact us today.
www.homesbyinova.com
281.565.2682
jason@homesbyinova.com
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ByKim LeFevers @
Monday, September 22, 2008 |
Our company produces hurricane resistant homes. We have been in business for 40 years and have never lost a home to high winds of any kind. The eight Deltec homes in Hurricane Katrina’s path survived with no structural damage. Since the hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, we have shipped many Deltec’s to customers whose conventional homes were lost to major hurricanes, including Katrina. Most recently, our Deltec homes have stood strong and kept our owners safe from Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.
Deltec recently built a LEED PLATINUM CERTIFIED GREEN HOME in New Orleans, Louisiana as part of the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition season finale that aired on May 18, 2008. More information can be found here http://www.extremeneworleans.com/
Visit us at www.deltechomes.com or call 800.642.2508 for information.
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By
PAULO PRADA Wall Street Journal @
Tuesday, September 23, 2008 |
In 1992 HOMESTEAD Florida was hit by Hurricane Andrew which nearly obliterated this coastal city 30 miles south of Miami, as it swept westward across the South. The population all but abandoned Homestead, and the local economy collapsed.
As areas such as Houston and Galveston, Texas, begin rebuilding after being hit hard by hurricanes Ike and Gustav this month, Homestead is a case study in disaster recovery. It demonstrates the difficulties of resuscitating a destroyed local economy but also how a community can redefine itself and return more robust than it was before the storm.
Sixteen years after Andrew, Homestead is thriving, on a scale that seemed unimaginable not long ago and in defiance of the real-estate meltdown in South Florida.
he population of Homestead soared to almost 57,000 by July 2007 from just fewer than 32,000 residents in 2000 -- about the same as when the hurricane roared through, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The growth, spurred by developers eager to build up one of the last rural areas of crowded Miami-Dade County, took off because Homestead was far enough from the metro hub to make prices for the new houses a relative bargain compared with closer, older developments. |
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By
Lou DeNino @
Wednesday, September 24, 2008 | |
We own one of these homes at this location and it was totally destroyed. There are no gaurantees. those that stood up are there by dumb luckl. We are very disappointed that nothing of our home stood up. Absolutely nothing! I do not recommend anyone buy one of these homes thinking that their investment will be safe because it won't be. |
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By
BILL HANNA star-telegram.com @
Wednesday, September 24, 2008 |
The devastating hit that Hurricane Ike delivered to the upper Texas coast has many experts questioning the breakneck pace of development along the beaches.
With the Bolivar Peninsula, Galveston Island and Surfside Beach all hit hard by the surge from the Category 2 storm, scientists are again saying that Texas needs to rethink the way it builds along the coast.
Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who oversees the Texas General Land Office, which is responsible for enforcing the Texas Open Beaches Act, said that during two flyovers of the coastline, he saw "hundreds" of homes sitting on the beach or in the water.
It is a sign, Patterson said, that in many places homes need to be built farther from beaches to protect dunes and allow room for beaches that are eroding. He proposed setback rules this year but was met with opposition.
"This is kind of an opportunity to take a big-picture look about where we go forward," he said. "This event says it’s time to take inventory, time to assess. It’s a good time to look at whether the rules we proposed earlier this year were stringent enough."
Patterson said he will propose setbacks again in hopes of gaining more public support.
"I think it’s less difficult today than it was a week ago to get support," he said. "I think we need to have more public hearings and to revisit the issue."
Galveston city officials opposed the earlier proposal, and Galveston County commissioners went further, saying the idea should be abandoned. Some coastal residents called the proposal a "land grab" by the state.
But Ike has changed the dynamics.
"A lot of the issues are gone, and we hope to find common ground where we can work together to do things better and smarter than what we inherited before," said Galveston County Judge James Yarbrough.
The Bolivar Peninsula, just a ferry ride away from Galveston Island, was hardest hit by Ike. Almost everything in the community of Gilchrist was destroyed, and Texas 87, the main road through the peninsula, may have to be moved in some places because it is now too close to the beach.
"Gilchrist, God love ’em, has nothing left," Yarbrough said. "There’s only eight out of 350 buildings left. There’s no debris, nothing.
"It’s just gone."
Crystal Beach lost about half its homes, but there is still rubble for homeowners to sift through.
With residents clamoring to get back in, Yarbrough said, coastal development issues will have to wait.
"At the right time, we’ll discuss these issues, but our mode right now is not worried about beach access and dune protection," he said. "Our primary focus is to allow folks to get back in and pick through the debris and bring some sort of closure."
Legal dispute
To give beaches time to recover, Patterson said, he will wait at least a year to take actions against homes now at the water’s edge. Sand that washes offshore during hurricanes often returns to the beach during the next year.
Under state law, any home on a beach is considered to be on state property and must be removed or demolished.
Since before Ike, Patterson has been involved in a legal dispute over 14 houses standing on public beaches in Surfside Beach. He was sued by the homeowners after offering them $50,000 apiece of state money to move their houses from areas that obstructed public access to the beaches.
Patterson said that the storm washed away 10 of those houses and that he now expects a quick resolution on the other four.
The sentiments to rethink coastal development were applauded by two Texas researchers who created a geo-hazards map showing that the upper Texas coast was sinking faster than anywhere else in the United States.
James Gibeaut, a coastal geologist with the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in Corpus Christi, said aerial surveys show many houses that need to be moved.
"There were just too many to count," he said.
John Anderson, a Rice University oceanographer and author of The Formation and Future of the Upper Texas Coast, said the city of Galveston needs to rethink its support for rapid growth on the west end. He also said he isn’t sure whether all sections of the Bolivar Peninsula can be rebuilt.
South Padre Island, hit by Hurricane Dolly this summer, is as vulnerable as Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula to a strong hurricane, he said.
Mustang Island
One area of the developed Texas coast in better shape is Mustang Island near Port Aransas, where setbacks keep homes away from the beach.
Under the rules proposed by Patterson, new buildings would have to be set back 60 times the erosion rate, as measured from the beach’s line of vegetation. If the shoreline is eroding 5 feet a year, then construction wouldn’t be allowed within 300 feet.
The Legislature ordered the new rules last year in hopes of reducing storm damage. But Patterson insists that it doesn’t make sense to enact them until it can be determined whether beaches will recover from Ike.
Patterson and Gibeaut say Mustang Island development is a good example of how coastal land should be developed.
"But it’s a wider island," Patterson said. "There’s more room there. The road is set back farther from the beach. You just don’t have the same kind of room in other places."
The cost of storm damage should also be considered, Anderson said.
"Is it right for the city of Galveston to ask taxpayers of Texas and perhaps ultimately the federal government to pay for this unbridled development?" he said.
$4 billion in claims?
The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, the insurer of last resort along the Texas coast, estimates that it may see $4 billion in claims from Ike. That would wipe out its $2.1 billion pool to cover losses, said Sandra Helin, a spokeswoman for the Southwestern Insurance Information Service, which oversees the fund. Up to 20 percent of any overruns could be collected annually from the state’s general revenue fund, she said.
Ike is the kind of storm that the association "has been warning the state about for 10 years," Helin said.
Every year, the agency asks for an increase and gets a fraction of what is sought, she said.
As insurance companies have pulled out of the Texas coast, the number of policies covered by the windstorm pool has soared. As of Aug. 31, the fund had 224,468 policyholders in 15 counties, an increase of 150,653 policies since 2001.
The $4 billion figure is merely an estimate, and insurance officials won’t really know the impact until adjusters and residents are allowed back into damaged areas.
"This will be a lengthy process," Helin said. "It could very easily be that these claims will be coming in for up to a year."
This is kind of an opportunity to take a big-picture look about where we go forward. . . . I think it’s less difficult today than it was a week ago to get support. I think we need to have more public hearings and to revisit the issue."
Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson
on proposed beach setback rules |
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By
ANDREW TAYLOR Associated Press @
Sunday, September 28, 2008 |
Congress passes $634B spending bill
The huge bill went below the radar screen because attention focused on the congressional bailout of Wall Street.
Democrats wrested concessions from the White House on $23 billion for disaster-ravaged states. |
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ByABC 13 @
Sunday, September 28, 2008 | |
Hurricane Resistant Homes in Beachtown on Galveston's east-end hold up to hurricane Ike. |
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ByJason Mercer @
Monday, September 29, 2008 |
In 2006, INOVA built a home in Galveston designed to withstand 140 mph Category 4 hurricane winds. That same home was also elevated high enough to survive the massive storm surge that any Category 4 storm would bring with it.
Here is a link to a file that contains photos of that home, still standing strong amidst debris and rubble from other homes www.homesbyinova.com/Survived.pdf Please take a moment to review this evidence that we do have the ability to construct homes that will survive the next Ike, Rita or Katrina.
Here are Ch 11 video clips from 2006 when we "set" that Galveston home. At the time Ch 11 dubbed it as one of the first hurricane proof houses in Galveston.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79hEcew_qHQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLXK1J54nZg
We’ve been told that Ch 11 intends to conduct a follow up story on this house, and we will certainly keep you informed as that materializes.
INOVA constructs homes to this same "Fortified for Safer Living" level mentioned above, and I wanted to share with you some evidence of the difference that can be made using "Storm-Safe" construction techniques.
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By
LOUISE @
Monday, September 29, 2008 | |
the only reason these homes made it is because they were above the serge of water, but a few of these homes were knocked down. we had a fema home behind my camp and it went and took the lady that had it and her two dogs. and this was build by fema and as high as these camps are. so that doesn't matter about hight. who want to climb 500 feet up in the air to get to there camp. camp by me made it and they were only 16 feet high. the people of gilchrist have always built, and the water didn't take that much land, galveston is trying to pull a fast one, for some reason. they always hated gilchrist, because we wouldn't incorprate with crystal beach. |
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ByRay Holiday @
Saturday, October 04, 2008 | |
I saw Palisade Palms pictures and it was amazing how it was left standing without any damage. Hats off to the Falcon Group for a great job! |
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By
Ted Cushman Coastal Contractor Special Report @
Friday, October 17, 2008 |
Learning from Buildings that Survived
Rebuilding may be months, or even years, in the future. East Texas coastal communities face hard choices about whether, and how, to return to ocean fronts whose face has been redrawn by the storm. But there’s hope to be found in the handful of homes still standing after Ike’s wave passed.
Retired Florida homebuilder Richard Reynolds visited Gilchrist, Texas, to inspect ten houses that survived the storm. Built to the above-code standards of the Institute for Business and Home Safety’s “Fortified … for safer living” program, the houses were elevated above the flood level. Wave and tidal action detached and washed away staircases set below the storm surge flood level, but left the homes intact. According to Reynolds, these homes will be serviceable as soon the stairs are replaced and power is restored — although their location now looks more like Mars than like the pleasant beach community it was before the storm, and no one knows when local authorities may once again allow occupancy.
Although the houses came through in good structural shape, Reynolds did note a few issues, which the IBHS Fortified program’s engineers are likely to respond to in future program guidance. For one thing, says Reynolds, “every single house” lost some roofing shingles. That’s to be expected — roofing manufacturer standards don’t even rate asphalt shingles to maximum hurricane-force winds. That’s why IBHS program standards for new construction require a secondary weather barrier that will stay in place in spite of the wind, even if the asphalt shingles blow off. Peel-and-stick membrane applied to sheathing joints to meet this requirement for these houses proved its worth, says Reynolds — almost none of the homes had roof leaks, despite some significant loss of shingles.
Reynolds did observe wind-blown rain intrusion at windows and doors — even in cases where the windows were protected by roll-down storm shutters. While it may be hard to make windows and doors any tighter than they already are, Reynolds suggests that builders may be able to devise some kind of drainage or protection to contain and drain any water that does blow in at cracks between the frames and the doors or the window sash. In coming months, says Reynolds, IBHS will be evaluating a range of methods that might be useful in reducing this type of water intrusion.
Another item worth noting is that none of the houses he looked at had gypsum-board walls or ceilings, says Reynolds — they used various wood or wood-composite panel products for interior wall and ceiling finishes. They also had wood floors and no carpeting. Reynolds says this spared the homes from any significant mold growth, even where some water did intrude. “The mold was minor,” he says. “They threw away a few throw rugs, and that was it.”
There were originally 13 Fortified houses on this stretch of beach, not ten. Three were destroyed by wave action. Reynolds says those three were probably impacted by floating debris from other, less well-constructed, nearby structures. If this area does rebuild, the new generation of structures will be governed by FEMA regulations that require builders to avoid methods that generate such destructive floating debris. |
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By
LOUISE FREDERICK @
Thursday, January 15, 2009 | |
TRUE A LOT OF THESE HOMES ARE STILL STANDING , BUT A LOT WENT TOO. I HAD A CAMP ON HAMM ROAD AND IT IS GONE, IT WAS BUILT WELL, BUT 3 CAMPS AROUND ME ARE STILL STANDING. JUST PLAIN LUCK. OUR CAMP WENT THROUGH A LOT OF STORMS AND STAYED WHEN A LOT WENT. IT WAS JUST LUCK IF YOUR CAMP STAYED. A NEW FEMA CAMP WAS BUILT BEHIND ME AND IT WENT. SO JUST PLAIN LUCK. AND THEN YOU HAVE TO FIGHT GOV. FOR YOUR OWN LAND. AS OF NOW 12 PAGES OF RESTRICTION ON YOUR OWN LANDTHAT YOU HAVE PAID TAXES ON FOR YEARS |
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