The Houston Chronicle published an editorial on Sunday sharing the five lessons they think we can learn from Texas’s experience with Hurricane Ike. The article is short and well worth a quick read. We particularly liked number four:
Better and smarter building makes sense
Hurricanes may not discriminate, but the damage they inflict on buildings is directly related to how those buildings were built, which usually means when they were built. Stronger homes withstand hurricane winds. According to a study done by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, modern homes and condominiums built to the International Residential Code and properly elevated fared well, even though they enjoyed no protection, such as it was, from the Seawall. The old homes on Galveston Island, both in the city and western beach communities, were slammed hard by the surge and the wind. And the vast majority of housing damage in the Galveston Bay rim communities was to homes built in the 1960s and 1970s, before current floodplain regulations requiring elevation of structures. One sensible notion is to push residential construction on Galveston Island and Bolivar Peninsula — and the roads and water and sewer lines they require — well back from the beach, as has been proposed by Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson. Developers don’t like the idea, of course, but the nation’s foremost expert on barrier islands says it is the least the state can do. He recommends going much farther back so that federal subsidies are not repeatedly used to rebuild in areas vulnerable to storms.
You can read the whole thing (for free) at the Chronicle’s website.
5 lessons we could learn from Ike
photo by inju.
