McCarty spoke with Florida Underwriter about the task force's specific recommendations on building codes, mitigation, and the mobile home industry, and how the governor and legislators responded.

Man Plans, Gods Laugh

Much of the emphasis on building codes following Hurricane Andrew focused on dealing with a Category 5 hurricane. Whoops! 2004 and 2005 caught everyone by surprise with a different hurricane peril — multiple storms. Rather than one devastating Category 5 storm, 2004 and 2005 each brought four somewhat more moderate storms. That was the bad news.

The good news: Those storms demonstrated how effective building codes can be when they are enforced. Storm after storm revealed that both site-built homes and mobile homes that were built in compliance with the Florida Building Code fared demonstrably better than those that were not.

In its report, the task force said that research “clearly demonstrates that safe homes can be built without prohibitive cost increases, especially when cost is calculated in the context of loss of quality of life post-hurricane, the payment of insurance deductibles, and general societal costs. By reducing their risk of loss, policyholders make it less likely that they will need to incur the additional cost of their deductible or suffer the inconvenience and cost associated with temporary housing.”

“One of the things we talked about in the task force was 'How do consumers look at the quality of homes being built in Florida?' ” McCarty said. “ People look at school districts, location, the energy rating on a water heater. But they don't look at the quality of the structure itself. Task force members recommended developing a scale for measuring the quality of a home's structure so people can factor that into their decision.”

They got their wish.

Legislators have issued just such a directive to OIR. The agency will conduct a study and develop a program that will provide an objective rating system that allows homeowners to evaluate the relative ability of properties to withstand the windload from a hurricane. The ball then passes to the Department of Financial Services (DFS), which must implement a pilot program based on OIR's findings. DFS has until March 1, 2007, to provide a report detailing the nature and construction of the rating scale, the effectiveness of rating based on pilot program results, and an operational plan for statewide implementation.

We Can Make it Better

Data still being compiled by the task force supports the theory that even those homes not built to the current code, but rather “hardened” via mitigation techniques, fared much better than those not retrofitted. Legislators are believers; they budgeted and Gov. Jeb Bush approved $250 million from general revenues for a far-reaching mitigation program.

Effective July 1, it provides free home inspections by the DFS and matching grants to homeowners of $5,000 to harden their homes. McCarty noted that studies show most retrofitting can be done for less than $2,000.

“We're very excited about the prospect of this $250 million being used to help Floridians make necessary investments to improve their homes to withstand wind,” McCarty said. “It is a significant commitment of capital. We see it as a long-term solution to what we are going to do for the housing stock built before 1994.”

Convincing the legislature and governor about the value of mitigation may have been a piece of cake compared to getting the public to the table. In its broadest terms, “mitigation” is a continuous effort to lessen the impact disasters have on people's lives and property by two means: construction techniques to harden the homes, and propaganda to educate consumers and contractors.

The task force noted that “barriers to widespread public aware-ness and understanding of hurricane mitigation include lack of understanding of wind-resistant construction by consumers and contractors, perception that mitigation is cost-prohibitive, and lack of awareness of mitigation cost benefits.” Hoping to knock down those barriers, the mitigation program also provides for an education and awareness campaign to entice consumers to get on the bandwagon.

Keeping Mobile Homes from Being “Mobile”

Extrapolating from Census 2000 data, it has been estimated that mobile homes make up 12 percent of Florida's housing units and that 10 percent of Florida's population lives in mobile homes. (The numbers are fuzzy; not all homes counted in the Census are still in service. Because there is no single entity that tracks mobile homes in current service in the state of Florida, there is no way to determine how many mobile homes became uninhabited as a result of the 2004 and 2005 storm seasons.)

“We estimate there are 860,000 mobile homes in Florida,” McCarty said, “and 80 percent of them were built before any federal regulation at all.”

According to a 2003 “Final Report on Hurricane Loss Reduction for Housing in Florida” by the International Hurricane Research Center at Florida International University, 338,000 mobile home units in Florida were constructed prior to 1976 and 643,000 were constructed between 1976 and 1994. This same report indicated that the 2000 Census data reflected more than 267,000 pre-1974 units in Florida, with more than 60 percent of them located in the most vulnerable coastal counties.

“We can't really do anything about [retrofitting] these older homes,” McCarty acknowledged. “But homes can be manufactured today that are wind resistant and, if properly installed, are fine. The problem with Floridians is our penchant for putting on carports and screened rooms. They become missiles and compromise the integrity of the structure.”

A Good Session

All in all, McCarty said he is “pretty impressed with what the legislature did in terms of the task force recommendations.” He noted that the $250 million for the mitigation program makes it the largest such program in the world.

He also had high praise for Gov. Jeb Bush and his “culture of preparedness.” “That's a great way to put it,” McCarty said. “It is absolutely amazing watching him go into his mode in terms of doing things strategically [during a natural disaster]. He has an incredibly comprehensive view. The organization and command in control in Florida is second to none.

“If we do have a disaster — and we will have one — our ultimate goal is to keep our people close to home,” he continued. “You can't really help people if they are in Tulsa. That was a large part of the after-problems in New Orleans. Government needs to get the infrastructure back in place as quickly as possible in order to move forward. We are constantly fine tuning that and getting better and learning from every storm.”

So, the optimists see the coming season as another learning experience. The pessimists, on the other hand …