As Hurricane Andrew memories fade,
Florida weakens building codes
USA Today
10 August 2017
Before Hurricane Katrina, before Superstorm Sandy, there was Hurricane
Andrew.
The intense Category 5 hurricane, a compact buzzsaw that ripped the
roofs off thousands of South Florida homes 25 years ago, was so
catastrophic that it led to sweeping changes in the insurance industry,
weather forecasting and disaster response.
And Floridians — shocked by acres of flattened houses — rewrote the
state's building codes, making them the toughest in the nation.
Now, as memories of the horrendous destruction of Aug. 24, 1992, grow
dim, the lessons learned from Andrew may be fading, too. The building
codes once hailed as the gold standard other states should emulate are
under assault.
At the core of that growing dispute is a simple calculation: the
tougher the building code, the more it costs to build a home.
Florida's codes dictate construction methods, require wind testing and
mandate extensive training and oversight for inspectors. Those
standards, home builders argue, can add unnecessary costs that don't
amount to a hurricane-proof home. Insurers and home owners'
associations say the tough codes save money in the long run.
This year, alarm bells went up all over the state capital, Tallahassee,
when the Republican-led legislature and GOP Gov. Rick Scott passed a
new law that untethers Florida's code from international standards and
requires fewer votes for the Florida Building Commission to make
changes to the building codes.
Opponents said it opened the door for the commission, which is
dominated by home builders and contractors, to weaken the codes.
Craig Fugate, the former head of the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, the federal agency that responds to disasters, said Florida's
latest move sickened him.
"I don't think builders are inherently evil people, but you've got to
look at what their business model is," said Fugate, who led Florida's
emergency management agency before heading up FEMA. "The quicker they
get to sell a home with the least amount of cost and the least time
delays increases the money they make."
Republican leaders and the state's home builders say such concerns are
overblown. Jeremy Stewart, a Crestview, Fla., developer and president
of the Florida Home Builders Association, noted that the bill passed in
Tallahassee did not change a single building code. Instead, he said, it
simply modernized the process for updating the code.
There's no reason, he said, to think developers will use the new
process to weaken the state's building codes, and bristled at the
suggestion that builders simply seek to cut costs.
"That's absolutely false and misleading," Stewart said. "There's not a
single contractor that I know of in the state of Florida that does not
want to be operating under the most stringent code, that's not
concerned with the well-being of our customers."
A building boom and haphazard codes
For Florida's builders and building officials, life could be defined as
"before Andrew" and "after Andrew."
The Florida peninsula juts straight into the tropical storm-prone area
of the Atlantic known as "hurricane alley." Before Andrew, South
Florida hadn't suffered a direct strike from a major hurricane since
Hurricane King in 1950, said Michael Goolsby, director of building code
administration for Miami-Dade County.
Year after year, hurricanes swept by, either slipping up the East Coast
or falling apart in the Gulf of Mexico. "That's more than 40 years,"
Goolsby said. "That brings about a certain level of complacency."
Meanwhile, construction boomed and the state's population swelled. To
curb haphazard home building, local governments created building codes,
but they varied from county to county.
"I've heard stories that there were up to 26 codes that were being
used," Stewart said.
What codes did exist were frequently ignored. Ricardo Alvarez, a former
state and federal building inspector, said contractors cut corners as
the storm drought dragged on. Instead of using sturdier plywood under
roofs, they used a cheaper, flimsier version of particle board. Instead
of using roofing nails, they used staples.
Then, Andrew hit.
Its 145 mph winds tore apart the working-class suburb of Homestead,
reducing entire city blocks to rubble. Debris torn from roofs or lifted
from the ground turned into deadly projectiles, smashing windows and
impaling people.
The numbers were staggering: 25,524 homes destroyed, another 101,241
damaged and more than 40 people killed, according to the National
Hurricane Center.
All told, Andrew led to $24.5 billion in insured losses, the costliest
disaster in U.S. history at the time. Only Hurricane Katrina in 2005
and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, cost more, according to
the Insurance Information Institute. Andrew's costs were so high that
11 insurance companies went bankrupt.
Andrew forced Florida leaders to examine disaster response, insurance
laws and evacuation procedures. The legislature created a state
catastrophe fund, which now stands at $17.6 billion, to help cover
losses from hurricanes. Lawmakers created Citizens Property Insurance
Corp., a not-for-profit, government-run insurance company that covers
more than 470,000 homeowners who can't find insurance on the private
market. And the state changed its procedures for evacuations,
communication during disasters and the role of emergency responders.
They took the hardest look at the building codes. Why, they wondered,
did thousands of roofs lift from their houses?
Investigators founds dozens of flaws but zeroed in on gables, the
triangular areas of a house that sit on top of a masonry wall and under
an arched roof. Gables could be made from wood at the time, which
investigators realized had created a glaring weakness easily exploited
by hurricane-force winds. When water and wind got through the gable,
the wind could lift up the entire roof or whip through the house,
blowing out windows and doors.
"When the wind came along, these gables folded in like a hinge,"
Goolsby said.
Andrew drives a
new approach
Over the next decade, state leaders studied construction standards,
negotiated with home builders, and finally, unveiled a statewide,
mandatory building code that took effect in 2002.
The lessons of Andrew drove many of the building code changes.
Inspectors now had to approve building plans and sign off on all phases
of new construction. The entire "building envelope" of a home — every
window, door, skylight or any point that could let in wind — had to
undergo testing and approval.
The first major test of Florida's new standards came in 2004, 12 years
after Hurricane Andrew. That year, four hurricanes — Charley, Frances,
Ivan and Jeanne — walloped the state in one hurricane season. The newer
homes, built under the tough code, survived.
A report from FEMA found that homes built after the codes were put into
place performed better than the older stock. A separate report from the
Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety found that owners of
post-Andrew homes filed 60% fewer insurance claims and the severity of
those claims was 42% lower.
"That is not a marginal change," said Julie Rochman, CEO and president
of the institute. "The codes proved themselves out beautifully."
Florida scales
back
Rather than embrace the success of the new codes, however, the state
started walking them back.
The Florida Building Commission — a 25-member board appointed by the
governor that includes builders, engineers and inspectors — analyzed
data from the four storms and decided to recalibrate how much wind a
Florida home would need to withstand.
“The general feeling was that in 2005 we were over-designing," Jack
Glenn, the retired director of technical services for the Florida Home
Builders Association told the Miami Herald. “We needed to relax a bit
because there is a cost impact.’’
Different areas of the state receive different winds on average. The
lower the wind, the lower the building requirements. After the 2004
season, state officials redrew the maps. The state increased the wind
loads in one area — South Florida — but reduced them by 20% in much of
the rest of the state. Jacksonville, on Florida's northeast coast,
largely spared by the four hurricanes, saw its wind loads reduced as
much as 35%.
Further tweaks to the code led to a startling change in 2015. The
insurance institute that had praised Florida for its 2004 hurricane
season performance and its tough building code downgraded the state's
code from the top spot to second place, behind Virginia.
This year, builders pushed for even bigger changes.
States around the country base their building codes on those developed
by the International Code Council (ICC). The council examines the
latest technology and uses experts from around the country to update
its codes every three years.
Florida had timed its process to the ICC updates. Every three years,
the state would adopt the new ICC codes. The Florida Building
Commission would remove portions that didn't affect Florida, such as
standards for roof-top snow accumulation, and add Florida-specific
provisions, such as strict high-wind requirements.
But during the legislative session this year, legislators pushed for
big changes. One proposal called for state officials to freeze the code
as it stands, with only occasional updates. Another proposal called for
a six-year cycle of updates instead of three.
Leslie Chapman-Henderson remembers Andrew vividly. She managed
Andrew-related insurance claims for Allstate. The legislature's
direction alarmed her.
"We were watching these bills fly out of committees unanimously and
we’re thinking, ‘This is not good,' " said Chapman-Henderson, who is
now president of the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes.
The negotiations ended with a compromise. Florida's building codes
would still be updated every three years, but they would no longer
adopt the ICC codes. Instead, Florida would keep its current code and
pick and choose which parts of the ICC code to adopt.
The law also reduced the number of votes required for the state's
building commission to change the building codes. Now a code change
requires just two-thirds of the board to support the change rather than
75%. That worries Fugate, the former FEMA director, who said the
commission is already stacked in favor of builders and contractors, who
account for 10 members of the 25-person board.
Kerri Wyland, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Scott, said the law reduces
"burdensome regulations while maintaining Florida's gold standard of
safety and innovation through an efficient and effective building code
adoption process."
Jimi Grande, senior vice president of the National Association of
Mutual Insurance Companies, fears state officials will cherry-pick
which technologies to adopt and which to ignore. Grande said insurers
are very nervous about that change, which could lead to higher premiums
for Florida homeowners.
"What they are doing is tying themselves to a new system that won't
keep up with science and technology," Grande said. "That's what's scary
about it."
The 2017 hurricane season ends Nov. 30 and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration has predicted as many as 19 named storms
could develop in the waters around the United States. As always,
Florida is in the crosshairs. That has Chapman-Henderson worried.
"We are still in a state of shock that the most hurricane-prone state
in the country would retreat from its world class building code
system," she said. "Florida was the good child. Now they're on the path
that led to the failures of Hurricane Andrew."
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