FL - Florida’s population boom drives bigger hurricane losses, despite tougher building codes
MIAMI — Florida leads the nation in strict building codes, and the decades of hard work have paid off in the increasing number of homes and buildings that survive each time a hurricane slashes the state.
But a new report from Swiss Re, a major global re-insurance company, suggests that all those hard-won gains have been undermined by the explosion of growth along the coast. And that has likely helped fuel the skyrocketing price of wind-storm insurance across the state.
One year ago, Hurricane Ian struck Southwest Florida as a powerful Category 4 that wiped whole blocks off the map along the coast and damaged homes and roofs miles inland. It’s the most expensive storm in the state’s history.
If that same storm had struck in the 1970s, the Swiss Re report said, it would have caused half or even a third as much damage as it did.
And while building codes have improved dramatically since 2002, when the updated standards went statewide, the biggest driver behind Ian’s outsize impact was just how many people now live in the strike zone.
“Our models show a clear imbalance: Reducing vulnerability by strengthening building codes, a key element of adaptation, has been insufficient since the 1970s to compensate for expected losses from accompanying population-driven property value growth,” the report, released Monday, read.
‘We do know how to build better’
Some building code experts disagreed with pointing the finger at sprawling growth along the coast for the soaring damage losses and insurance premiums. They argue it’s the state’s aging housing stock that is most vulnerable and newer homes and upgraded old ones have endured high winds better and helped reduce risks.
“I don’t think they’re equal forces,” said Leslie Chapman-Henderson, president of FLASH, or the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes. “We’ve seen the survival of even the most affordable homes in the path of these storms.”
Dorothy Mazzarella, vice president for government relations for the International Code Council, said her key takeaway from the report is the recognition that better building codes work. She said people will always want to live along Florida’s coastline, no matter how vulnerable it is — or how expensive it gets to live there — so the answer is to better prepare for future storms.
“We have to do more on the front end, which is the mitigation side,” Mazzarella said. “We can’t prevent them, but we know we can prepare for them.”
However, Chapman-Henderson added, relying on new construction to strengthen the state’s risky spots only addresses a small part of the problem.
Older homes, built before effective hurricane-resistant building codes kicked in, make up the majority of Florida’s housing stock. In the areas touched by Ian’s winds alone, about 69% of the properties were built before 2000, according to the Wall Street Journal’s review of census data and National Hurricane Center records.
And fixing them is more complicated than simply building a new home from scratch.
In Lee County, there’s been a backlash against bringing storm-damaged homes all the way up to the newest version of the code, a pricey endeavor that may involve elevating it several feet.
“Unfortunately, this is the clash of what’s affordable and what’s achievable and what’s ideal,” Chapman-Henderson said. “We do know how to build in the face of these disasters that cost millions of dollars. We have to maintain the will to do so on a consistent basis.”
