From Green Right Now Reports
Significantly more Gulf Coast homes and businesses are at risk of disastrous flooding from hurricane-related storm surges than previously recognized by property owners or policymakers, a new study says.
The study also found that government minimum flood elevation requirements for properties vulnerable to storm surge throughout the Gulf Coast region are woefully inadequate. The report comes one year after Hurricane Ike struck and wiped away many of the structures on the Bolivar Peninsula near Galveston last September.
“HURRICANE IKE: Nature’s Force vs. Structural Strength” was issued by the Institute for Business & Home Safety, a not-for-profit applied research and communications organization supported by property insurers and reinsurers. The IBHS study questions the current basis for elevating properties along the Gulf Coast and urges the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to provide greater incentives for building well above the minimum elevations now in place.
More than 50 percent of the nation’s population lives within 50 miles of the coast, with more than $9 trillion of insured coastal property vulnerable to hurricanes. The NFIP, which is the federal government program that provides flood insurance to homes and businesses, also establishes base flood elevation (BFE) levels for properties.
According to the new study’s findings, the BFE requirement for homes on Texas’ Bolivar Peninsula ranged between 13 feet for homes built in the 1970s and 17 feet to 19 feet for homes built beginning in 1983. All but a handful of properties within the first few rows of houses from the coast, built to even the highest elevation requirements, were washed away during Hurricane Ike.
By contrast, the study found that 10 homes on the Bolivar Peninsula designed and built under IBHS’s building code-plus new construction program, “Fortified. . .for safer living,” survived the storm sustaining minor damage. Those homes had outdoor decks at 18 feet that were destroyed, but the homes, which were elevated to 26 feet, survived.
According to IBHS Senior Vice President of Research and Chief Engineer Dr. Tim Reinhold, most homes in coastal areas are built to or slightly above 100-year base flood elevations.
“A 100-year flood means that the level of flood water has a 1 percent chance of being equaled or exceeded in any single year,” Reinhold said in a statement “However, it is well recognized in the engineering community that coastal homes built to this level have a 26 percent chance of being flooded or demolished over the life of a 30-year mortgage. This chance increases to about 40 percent in a 50-year period.”
“All it takes is a breaking wave about 2 feet above the base of a house to knock out the bottom floor or destroy a frame house,” Reinhold said. “The chances of destruction can be significantly reduced by employing what has been learned about the importance of proper elevation, which can be relatively inexpensive when building a coastal home.”