I'm glad to hear you were spared, phoenix! Charley was coming right your way.
We vacation almost yearly on Sanibel or Captiva. I've been following websites detailing the damage. Such a beautiful area, it's so sad!
Here's some photos from Captiva.
Captiva photos
Here's an article from today's NYTimes that mentions the mobile home/building code question
New York Times
August 20, 2004
After Hurricane Charley, a New Look at Stiffer Building Codes
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
SARASOTA, Fla., Aug. 19 - When structural engineers from Miami pushed the rest of Florida to adopt much stricter building codes after Hurricane Andrew, the response was generally blasé. Southeastern Florida has a much greater chance of being hit by a hurricane than the rest of the state, after all, so its experts were accused of crying wolf.
"You'd hear, 'We don't get hit with hurricanes that much,' and, 'You're much more vulnerable down there,' " said John Pistorino, an engineer and a consultant to Miami-Dade County on building codes. "People had really let their guard down."
The consequences are now on vivid display in coastal towns like Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte, where high winds left countless twisted heaps of wood and metal. Even as far inland as Orlando, enormous trees crashed through roofs and walls. In rural inland counties, intense gusts created so much pressure in structures that they literally exploded, as if squashed by a giant fist.
Now, as southwestern and central Florida begin tallying billions of dollars in property damage from Hurricane Charley, advocates for stiffer building regulations see a golden opportunity. The powerful winds razed or badly damaged thousands of homes and other buildings, forcing Florida to conduct a re-evaluation just two years after it enacted regulations that many people considered sufficient.
Under particular scrutiny are mobile homes, many of which were blown to bits despite a 1999 rule requiring stronger "tie-downs," anchors that latch mobile homes to the ground.
Prompted by reports of widespread shoddy construction in Miami after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the Legislature adopted a statewide building code in 2001 that replaced a patchwork of county and municipal codes.
The code toughened requirements on new buildings for roofing, siding and other construction components, all to reduce flying debris in a storm. New buildings must also be able to withstand wind speeds that vary by region, from 100 miles an hour inland to about 150 m.p.h. in Key West.
The state code allows counties to adopt even stricter standards. But only Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, at the southeastern tip, did so. They had in fact adopted the most stringent hurricane code in the nation in 1994.
Those two counties require hurricane shutters or impact-resistant windows on every residential building, as well as stronger reinforcement of roofs and walls, windows and door openings.
In Charlotte County, where Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte were devastated by Hurricane Charley, new construction has to withstand winds of 120 to 130 m.p.h. Some experts have pronounced that criteria inadequate, given the 145 m.p.h. gusts last week.
"I would think the public in general would make sure that the Legislature gets tougher on the building codes now," said Herbert Saffir, a structural engineer in Coral Gables who helped develop the Saffir-Simpson scale that measures hurricane strength. "People want to keep the costs down, and that's understandable. But they have to understand that really it's to their advantage to spend some more and get a safer home."
Even before Hurricane Charley, the state was moving toward trading its rules for the International Building Code, which is more comprehensive, said Dr. Timothy Reinhold of the Institute for Business and Home Safety, an insurance industry group.
The international code, however, has one glaring flaw, Dr. Reinhold said. It would allow about a quarter of the state to approve less hurricane-resistant construction than the existing code.
"The middle and upper portions of the state would suddenly be allowed to have conventional construction, the same as you would build in Atlanta or Minneapolis," Dr. Reinhold said. "We raised a red flag, and we've been getting a lot of flack from builders on that."
Gov. Jeb Bush praised the new code on Sunday at a news conference in Arcadia, saying he hoped the damage from the hurricane would obliterate any talk of lowering state standards.
Raul L. Rodriguez, chairman of the Florida Building Commission, said he would recommend keeping the current wind-speed requirements if the international code was adopted.
Dr. Reinhold's group is among many scrutinizing the damage this week to determine why some buildings held up and others did not. Structures built after 2002, he said, appear to have survived quite well.
There are also stark lessons. Tile roofs proved a liability, as many tiles were not fastened well and became missiles. Popular aluminum pool enclosures also failed the storm's test, as did some recently installed tie-downs for mobile homes.
Mr. Saffir said stronger tie-downs were no guarantee for mobile homes, which house almost 12 percent of Florida residents, according to Census Bureau data.
Mr. Pistorino said that after Hurricane Andrew he urged Miami-Dade County to outlaw mobile homes but met resistance because they are among the few options for poor families and retirees on fixed incomes.
In a draft report to the Federal Emergency Management Agency after that 1992 hurricane, Mr. Pistorino said, he recommended outlawing mobile homes in all the state's hurricane zones. But the agency "felt that was a little too controversial," he added.
"The state says we can't exclude them because they represent affordable housing and people otherwise wouldn't be able to live here," Mr. Pistorino said. "Well, my point is that the misery will be there regardless because these people are going to lose all their possessions. So I'm not sure what we're accomplishing by keeping them."
The executive director of the Florida Manufactured Housing Association, Frank Williams, said mobile homes built after the federal government stiffened their construction rules in 1994 fared well in Hurricane Charley, even in Punta Gorda, the hardest-hit area.
"The TV cameras zeroed in on the older homes because it's better visuals," Mr. Williams said, adding that two people died in such homes during the storm. "From the press accounts, you'd think every death from this thing occurred in a mobile home.''
Whether or not regulations are tightened, mobile homes are thinning in Florida, partly because of changing environmental regulations and a voracious real estate market that is enticing owners of parks for mobile homes to sell to high-end developers. The industry will lobby the Legislature not to change any rules that might increase costs, Mr. Pistorino said, as will the powerful building industry, many of whose leaders are close to Mr. Bush, a former developer himself, and to lawmakers.
Builders resist stiffer codes because they increase construction costs, said Charles Danger, head of the Miami-Dade Building Department. The building lobby, he noted, persuaded Mr. Bush and the Legislature to delay enacting the new code until March 2002, almost year after they had approved it.
Mr. Saffir said that using the safest materials, like impact-resistant windows, increased building costs by only 5 percent to 8 percent.
Jack Glenn, technical services director for the Florida Home Builders Association, in Tallahassee, said that if anything Hurricane Charley should prompt owners of older buildings to reinforce them. The regulations from two years ago "may require a little tweaking," Mr. Glenn said, "but in general the building code has performed very well."
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Oh Phoenix, I hope your husband will be okay!
