. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. SEA SCIENCE a few low-cost but carefully planned improvements. Proper connections can hold together a house in winds of up to 130 or 140 mph — more than Hurricane Fran's 120-mph gusts — and a high floor elevation and a deep piling foundation can protect a building from flooding, erosion and waves. Beyond the coast, these same measures can equip inland homes to weather hurricanes, floods, • tornadoes and other severe storms. The best and least expensive way to make a building storm- resistant is to modify i
. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. SEA SCIENCE a few low-cost but carefully planned improvements. Proper connections can hold together a house in winds of up to 130 or 140 mph — more than Hurricane Fran's 120-mph gusts — and a high floor elevation and a deep piling foundation can protect a building from flooding, erosion and waves. Beyond the coast, these same measures can equip inland homes to weather hurricanes, floods, • tornadoes and other severe storms. The best and least expensive way to make a building storm- resistant is to modify it while it's under construction, Rogers says. "Everything is open, you can get to everything, you know how it fits together, you know the hazards and can build accord- ingly," he says. Retrofitting older buildings can be more difficult. But it's often worth the effort to make selected low-cost improvements even if the building cannot be brought to present codes. "Incremental improvements can make a big difference in damage to buildings in the future," Rogers says. "The lesser conditions will happen more frequently. We only may get 130-mile-per-hour gusts once every 50 years, but we might get 110-mile-per-hour gusts every 25 or 30 ; FLOODING Decades of experience lie behind Rogers' advice. Over the last 22 years, he's surveyed the structural damage from every major hurricane that has struck the East and Gulf coasts. What has this work taught him? "In simplest terms, the key is not to get wet and never, ever get hit by a wave," he says. Buildings are most often destroyed by the waves and erosion that accompany storm-induced floods. Erosion causes structures to collapse, and the power of even small waves can pound a home into pieces. As unlikely as it sounds, research has shown that a 2-foot breaking wave can easily destroy a wall designed for 120-mph winds, Rogers says. The remedies are a deep piling foundation and a high floor
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