After Hurricane Michael, a call for stricter building codes in the Panhandle of Florida: NPR

In Mexico Beach, Florida, Lance Erwin is one of the lucky ones. His house is still standing. He stayed at home during Hurricane Michael, a few blocks from the beach, in a part of his house that he calls his "vault".

"The garage door was shaking," he says. "I knew the roof was gone at that time because everything was shaking, and I thought," Hang in there. "I thought everything would be fine."

Florida has some of the toughest building codes in the country. But in the Panhandle, you would not know it. The rules are less strict – allowing buildings that could not withstand Michael's winds at 155 mph.

Erwin lost doors, windows and part of his roof. But his house is still there. The same can not be said for many other residents. Whole blocks are flattened. The mayor of Mexico Beach said that 75% of the city was gone. The storm surge swept away the houses on the beach, far from their foundations, on the other side of the coastal road. The violent winds rising from the roofs were even more damaging.

According to Craig Fugate, former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and former head of emergency management, one of the reasons for the extreme destruction in Mexico Beach and in other Panhandle locations is that there is an old substandard construction that goes beyond the building code. in Florida. "It's what I call old Florida," he says. "This is not a group of skyscrapers.This is not a lot of new builds.These are multigenerational Florida families.Many of them were descendants of people who fished in the regions. "

After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Florida seriously considered its building codes. In South Florida, Miami-Dade and Broward counties have adopted stringent standards, requiring storm shutters and reinforced concrete block construction for all new buildings. The goal was to make structures capable of withstanding winds up to 175 mph.

According to structural engineer John Pistorino, when Florida revised its construction code at the state level, officials decided not to impose the wind speed standard of the south of Florida at 175 mph elsewhere in the state. "Unfortunately, because this is based on the likelihood of storms in the past and all the rest," said Pistorino, who helped develop the standards, "things are going down as you progress further north in Florida." Historically, there have been fewer intense hurricanes on the panhandle than elsewhere in the state.

In some communities of the Florida Panhandle, new builds must only withstand winds of 130mph or less, which is well below the 155mph winds observed during Hurricane Michael. In the aftermath of the storm, as local, regional and federal authorities assess the damage, there is a consensus that building codes along the Florida Panhandle must be more stringent. Florida Governor Rick Scott and FEMA Chief Brock Long said it last week after their visit to Mexico Beach.

David Prevatt, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Florida, was part of a team that spent the weekend on Panhandle collecting data on Michael's impact in this country. "What we have seen is that almost all types of construction, all types of materials and all types of housing have been damaged," he says. "What has not been damaged are well-designed homes."

Fugate, the former head of FEMA, has long felt that the wind speed standards along the Florida Panhandle were too low. He added that when decision-makers developed them, they did not include information about a powerful hurricane that hit the area in the 19th century, before accurate records were kept. "If you add this storm again," says Fugate, "and now, especially if you add Michael again, this will impose a much higher wind load for the coast well inland because of these two storms. "

The Florida Building Commission is in the process of reviewing the state code and is awaiting recommendations from the University of Florida's Prevatt-led team. But Prevatt says that understanding how to build resilient structures is only the first step. "We know what can be done, it has been proven, the research is there." He says that along the Panhandle, the key question is "if a community is ready to adopt it or not."

Realtors, home builders, the insurance industry and even affordable housing advocates will all have a voice as Florida ponders how to prepare for the next storm like Hurricane Michael.