The elevated house that the owners call the Sand Palace, on 36th Street in Mexico Beach, Fla., came through Hurricane Michael almost unscathed.CreditCreditJohnny Milano for The New York Times
Posted on 10/16/2018 8:10:03 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
MEXICO BEACH, Fla. — As they built their dream house last year on the shimmering sands of the Gulf of Mexico, Russell King and his nephew, Dr. Lebron Lackey, painstakingly documented every detail of the elevated construction, from the 40-foot pilings buried into the ground to the types of screws drilled into the walls. They picked gleaming paints from a palette of shore colors, chose salt-tolerant species to plant in the beach dunes and christened their creation the Sand Palace of Mexico Beach.
They also installed an outdoor security camera. Its video footage became the only view of their property as Hurricane Michael thundered ashore last week, the most intense storm recorded in the history of the Florida Panhandle.
The camera showed a horrifying tunnel of gray fury worsening by the hour as Dr. Lackey, a 54-year-old radiologist, stared helplessly from more than 400 miles away at the corner of his roof.
“It would buck like an airplane wing,” he said from his residence in Cleveland, Tenn. “I kept expecting to see it tear off.”
But it didn’t. When The New York Times published an analysis of aerial images showing a mile-long stretch of Mexico Beach where at least three-quarters of the buildings were damaged, Dr. Lackey saw his sand palace still standing, majestic amid the apocalyptic wreckage, the last surviving beachfront house on his block.
“We wanted to build it for the big one,” he said. “We just never knew we’d find the big one so fast.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The elevated house that the owners call the Sand Palace, on 36th Street in Mexico Beach, Fla., came through Hurricane Michael almost unscathed.CreditCreditJohnny Milano for The New York Times
The one right behind it seems alright. Also the one directly above them. And the one with the red roof. Some buildings are built to last.
Don’t anybody tell the NYT that these guys did a lot of research and built their house to standards which were far higher than what the local building codes required. That’s the lesson of this story.
Built to withstand 250mph winds.
Yowsa!
The lesson that every furniture maker knows already: screws are better than nails.
Whoever built this house is going to have a lot of business.
And what is the cost per square foot to build a house that will withstand a Category 4 hurricane?
It was not so long ago that Floridians built their modest bungalows on the barrier islands knowing a hurricane could destroy it.
The folks at Mexico Beach had better rebuild as quickly as possible before the insurance companies demand that the building codes be strengthened beyond what are currently in effect.
Soon, only the mega-rich will be able to afford to build a house on the Florida barrier islands.
“Whoever built this house is going to have a lot of business.”
I suspect the price of building for 250mph winds will damped the enthusiasm.
dampen
The article goes on to say that this house cost double the square foot price of a conventional home.
I wonder if the owners got a break on windstorm insurance premiums?
That reminds me of what the Bolivar Peninsula looked like after Ike.
Amazing story. Thanks for posting.
and is it looter-proof ?
“his nephew, Dr. Lebron Lackey”
What a classic name. There are lots of lackeys for LeBron every time he opens his mouth on “non-basketball” subjects.
Built with poured concrete walls! That’s super expensive but cooling in the summer.
Over the last decade or two, most coastal regions have adopted Miami-Dade County building codes. Most likely the vast majority of the beach homes were built before that.
Window roof and siding retention are the keys to most of those codes. If you can keep the skeleton together, it will withstand much of the damage.
This guy looks like he clearly overbuilt even to those stringent codes, but the other standing structures look modern enough to be under the current code.
I'm betting Charles Gaskin is booked solid for the next decade...
“and is it looter-proof ?”
The outside stairs were designed to (and did) tear away, leaving the only access by ladder.
Dome homes have a much lower wind load and if built with a hard shell, can withstand F5 level winds. Might be a good idea for those in tornado or hurricane areas.
So what’s the point of such a strong house, or living there, if everything else around your house is flattened, impassable, destroyed, and without services?
He should have built a helipad to go with it.
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