Re: OT: Talk about bad luck (Halifax)

From: John Smith (a_at_nonymous.com)
Date: 09/30/03 

Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 18:11:19 GMT

Ken Moreau wrote:
> Kerry Main wrote:
>
>> For those that would like to re-visit what one of the worst
>> hurricanes was like, check out:
>>
>> http://www.sptimes.com/2002/webspecials02/andrew/
>
> Well, if we are comparing hurricane stories... :^)
>
> I was in Palm Beach when Andrew devastated Homestead: if Andrew had
> taken a right turn instead of a left turn at the Bahamas, those
> pictures would have been of my neighborhood instead of my parent's
> neighborhood. My father talks about how they were running from room
> to room to try and find a safe spot, as the beams of wood from the
> other destroyed houses would smash into their house and wreck their
> supposed "safe" spot. They survived with no injuries, but a
> terrifying few hours.
>
> But what was most interesting was the pattern of destruction. The
> local paper tried to find a correlation around which houses were
> destroyed and which survived mostly intact. They looked at type of
> construction, location, date of construction, the builders, price,
> east vs west facing, and couldn't find any correlation. Then they
> found a factor which offered an almost perfect, 100% correlation to
> whether the house survived:
>
> Who inspected it during construction.
>
> The local paper then checked the net worth of the inspectors, and
> again found an almost perfect correlation between net worth and amount
> of destruction: the higher the net worth of the inspector, the more
> likely the house was to be destroyed. And the funny thing was that
> these same inspectors were by far the most productive, with them being
> able to inspect 20, 30 or even 40 houses in a day, where the other
> inspectors were lucky to inspect 10 houses in a day... :^)
>
> The paper had fun with this for *weeks*!

Interesting story.
Do you recall which newspaper and approximately which date the article(s)
ran?

One has to suspect that homes built using poured concrete walls (often
inside what are known as ICF's or 'insulated concrete forms') ought to have
performed well. The major vunerability of homes like these is the roof
attachment points, strength of the roof system, and door/window
penetrations.

But in a hurricane like Andrew the door/window opening would have likely
been penetrated by flying debris even if boarded up with 3/4" plywood, and
most roof systems would have failed.

Relevant Pages

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