Are hurricanes getting worse, or are we building dumber?

I submit that both may apply, and both are due to the human infestation of planet Earth. We may not like thinking of ourselves as a virus, but we sure are behaving like a virus infection out to kill the host body. The body seems to be reacting.

Although some thought has been given to weakening or steering tropical cyclones, and some thinking has been devoted to strengthening buildings, very little thought has been given to living with these storms and mimicking nature. The flora and fauna of nature does live with the recurring forces of nature. They do or they perish.

Structures built prior to 1950 do well in today's hurricanes, whereas those built most recently do very poorly. Why is that, you might ask.

For one, any old building still here to do well has proved itself by design, materials, and the craftsmanship. What we build today is designed by a computer, constructed of cheap composite materials, and is built by anybody who can operate a nail gun.

The building trades of today are like the two-by-fours of today, not what they used to be. A two-by-four used to measure two inches by four inches and be a stout, seasoned, hunk of lumber, as were the two-by-sixs and the two-by-eights. Today we settle for a half-inch shaved off each dimension in wood that a little over a decade ago was a seed in a pine cone, cut, milled, stacked, and on site within days of being a squirrel's home.

Walls used to be hard stuff to put a fist through, but lean too hard on a modern wall and you just might fall through into the next room. The wall board is chalk cake with a paper coating and interior doors are pressed paper with a very thin wood coating. The exterior can be saw dust and resin made to look like clapboard or brick. The latest composite to replace plywood is waferweld or chip board, said to be "good as" plywood.

Evidently not. None of it is as good as what it replaced, but it is all cheaper and/or easier to work with using production power tools and unskilled labor. We can easily and quickly erect houses and apartment buildings, and do it by the development, acres and acres going up like a composite park fungus, but not bad looking after the painters and landscapers get finished. Looks like hell after a hurricane gets finished, but FEMA has a toll-free number.

Somebody should call that toll-free number and bitch to FEMA about allowing water soluable composites, chalkboard, and 1.5 by 3.5s in load-bearing walls in hurricane-prone areas, and asking why there is anything but steel reinforced concrete allowed in any potential surge or flood area. Steel reinforced concrete is the ONLY building method that repeatedly and consistantly survives the atmospheric forces of nature. For a model, go visit any old lighthouse. You can build right on the water with waves lapping at your foundation, and you can go tall as you please, but your floor plan at every level will be a circle and hanging a painting will pose a problem.

Furthermore, for those who persist in building suburbia cracker boxes in hurricane landing areas, I would ban the square. Any box made of ninety-degree angles is the weakest form we can build. Any perfect sphere is the strongest. Any triangle is stronger than any polygon. Even a geodesic dome built with modern two-by-fours and waferweld sheathing stapled on will stand up to any hurricane wind, IF you bolt the sill plate to a concrete foundation and allow pressure (wind and water) to equalize. Don't seal it up!

The single biggest mistake is building a cracker box home and then sealing it as FEMA directs. Even a small surge or flood will rip that box from its foundation. Lose the roof and you have a box open top and bottom. How strong are those, and what is it like being in a box of composites and consumer trash that folds up. Few can tell us, because few have survived that experience. If I were king, I'd tattoo this on every mitigator:

The taller they are, the further they fall, and debris begats debris.

Enough have died to make such deadly homes illegal, but they are very legal, all built to the newer improved hurricane codes. They don't hold up any better, but they won't mangle, strangle, fold, spindle, and mutilate you so fast. The post-Katrina (Insert your preferred level of government letter here)EMA thought is go higher, but that will only place your box up where the destructive waves are, also up where debris is blowing about unhindered and unarrested by water. In a community of tall cracker boxes run by ?EMA minions there WILL be millions of tons of debris and a plethora of dead bodies.

A home should never be a death trap, but many are. They only look strong, secure, safe, and storm worthy. A modern home offers the illusion of safety and security, which encourages a modern homeowner to try to ride an approaching storm out, and some do that with the entire family, even offering sanctary to others with older homes they don't feel safe and secure in.

If they put warnings on cigarette packs, bigger warnings should be placed on death trap homes. Here's my suggested warning label for the modern cracker box with two-by-four or six exterior walls:

WARNING: This structure was built by the lowest bidder using illegal labor and composite waste materials from the lowest bidding vendor, to a code created by the builders and suppliers to facilitate cost-effective building, mitigated by expedient taxing authorities, and may be very hazardous to your health in the event of any extreme weather. DO NOT take shelter in or anywhere near this structure!

Furthermore, I would identify all such death trap structures in a community and ban staying in them during any mandatory evacuation. Suicide is illegal if stupidy isn't. Encouraging others to commit suicide with you is VERY illegal, immoral, too. Keeping a dumb animal for company is cruelty to animals. We CAN do something, but we don't. When these people die, aren't we accessories to manslaughter, at least negligent homicide.

We now know which structures will and which will not survive a cat-5 hurricane, and all mitigation efforts should mitigate to worst-case. It does no service to a community to mitigate to a cat-3 and then be hit by a cat-4 or cat-5. Mitigate to a cat-5 and get hit by a cat-3, you have been of great service, assuming your cat-5 mitigations were true to a cat-5 storm.

In New Orleans, their cat-3 mitigations weren't even true to a cat-2. Cat-2 was what they got, and everything that should have been fine or worked well, failed. What hurricanes do best is put things to a true test. FEMA only tests plans. When those plans fail, FEMA will mandate mitigation, which communities get waivers for by getting their elected representitives to represent them. FEMA will then test the new and improved plan, a viscious, deadly, very expensive cycle.

I recently took a bicycle tour of a new development of single family housing units in the Back Bay area of Biloxi and saw hundreds of beautiful two-story homes ruined by hurricane storm surge. All were within a Chihuahua's walk to the bay on land three to six feet above sea level, every house insured by the National Flood Insurance Program and sanctioned by every level of EMAs. If that isn't proof that our experts aren't, then offering a hundred more cases just like it isn't proof either, but the Katrina impact area is littered with proof of grand-scale incompetence if we allow them their mantles of expertise.

I say, STOP THE BULLSHIT! Fire all the idiots who had anything to do with managing our disasters of the past fifty years and install all new idiots, but hold these new idiots personally accountable for anyone who dies. Any elected official who attempts to waive a ?EMA mitigation should be arrested and charged with attempted murder. All who pushed are charged with conspiracy. That will stop the bullshit, but what will stop the building of death traps and future debris piles.

Immediately terminate ALL federal insurance subsidies and put the insurance industry back on a sound underwriting basis. If you can't get it insured, you can't get it financed. In most cases, if you can't get your project financed, you can't go forward. Those who do are totally at risk.

There should be nothing but charity humanitarian aid after any natural disaster. If you don't have good insurance and good advice, you are just SOL like a dumb squirrel who nests in a forrest of future lumber or paper.

The cost of disasters will go way way down, and so will the number of disasters. We have it right when a cat-5 blow direct hits a populated coastal area, nobody died, and it isn't considered a disaster.

We are a long way from having it right, because for decades we have been marching in the wrong direction with FEMA leading the parade, and political powers leading FEMA this way and that on the fickle trail of expediency through the forest of procedures and regulations that expedite inefficiency and subsidize stupidity.

Today is well past the time that "WE the People" who have to pay for this idiotic bullshit collectively shout, ENOUGH!

So much for building dumb. What IS smart? Monlithic concrete is smartest. Steel reinforced goes without saying, but when I use the term concrete, I am assuming the proper steel. A concrete structure on a solid foundation WILL survive. The bigger, the better. To survive even better, avoid subjecting flat walls to wind and wave action. Round is good. Round and smooth is even better. Half buried is best. The hurricane proof home traps air not people and can be called a true storm shelter, but a hurricane "proof" home is designed to go "under" the waters of the surge. Those who like waterfront must build low and monolithic.

The second dumbest thing we do is go up. We build on stilts or piers. We haven't yet figured a way to do that for fishing piers and for bridges that must be up, so why build a small section of one and stick a box house on it, or a concrete dome for that matter. You are just putting the habitat up where the waves are going to be.

That ain't smart, AND hurricanes prove that unwiseness again and again to no avail. We will go right back out there on a barrier island or low coastal ex-swamp and rebuild the same damn thing, maybe go higher. Why? Because we suffered no financial consequence the last time. In fact, we made out like a bandit, so let's do that again and pray for another boon disaster.

We now have states where disaster is their number one industry that brings in outside dollars by the billions. If they go a few years without one, the state economy suffers a depression. Louisiana might very well file bankruptsy if we put an end to disasters. That would be a true disaster. Florida might have to return to being a tourist and retirement state.

In addition to building with the right materials, use proven plans and a licensed and bonded contractor with experience. In any home shelter, build into it air-trapping space that can be presurized to push water down and out, keeping it down and out for the duration of need.

An entire home as an air-trapping shelter is the ultimate home for our coastal wetlands and barrier islands. This ultimate home should generate its own electricity, manufacture its own methane gas, draw its own water, and treat its own waste. For communications, this super dome home is totally independent by using satallite Internet.

A super dome home is beyond the means of most coastal habitaters, but the concrete home is within the means of anyone who can afford a cracker box, and your boy and his buddies could build it for you. Any kid who likes to builds with Lego blocks can build with the giant Lego blocks of ICF (Insulated Concrete Form) home building. This technique builds super homes that stand up to all storms, hurricanes, even tornados. They survive earthquakes and fires. They love a good flood and you can't tell what they are by looking at them. They are bunkers made to look like a house inside and out. Only your insurance company need know that you live in a bunker. You will stand out in a debris field along with domes and anything round.

How much more will a super home cost? Actually, they cost only slightly more to build but far less to operate and maintain. For the do-it yourselfers, the construction costs might even be less. In every way, ICF homes are better than what we now build and live in, and the hundreds of ICF and dome homes built in Florida since Andrew in '92 left the ICF and domes standing while all around were flattened, still have those and the new ICF homes standing undamaged by these new megacanes of the past few years.

The super home proves itself again and again, year after year, and against everything nature can throw at them--storms, tornados, floods, brush fires, earthquakes, and hurricanes.

The famous Dome of a Home built right on the beach at Gulf Shores, Florida, took a direct hit from Ivan the Terrible in 2004, then got hit by Dennis in '05, THEN Katrina, months later, and the only damage was the loss of its steps which were designed to break away. That is what I call a home. All around it are houses that come and go.

Doesn't anyone notice that the only structures standing on barrier islands after a hurricane are large concrete condos, ICF homes, and domes on a ground-level concrete foundation? Insurance companies are taking notice and adjusting premiums accordingly.

If domes are so damn good, then why did the Super Dome lose a roof?

Good question, but the answer blames the idiots who sealed the dome by shutting all the doors, then putting all those poor people under so much pressure. That roof blew out, not off. A hurricane brings very low air pressure. A dome roof is not designed to resist pressure from the inside. The bigger the dome, the bigger that problem will be, so you leave the doors OPEN. The only coastal building on the Mississippi coast unaffected by Katrina is the concrete dome colleseum in Biloxi.

A round Catholic church with a dome roof didn't do too badly, but what wasn't concrete was stained glass. All of the round water tanks up on tall stilts did well, did survive, and stand lighthoses as a testament to round. Large debris piles of sticks call our disaster experts and ?EMA professionals a bunch of corrupt and/or ignorant idiots.

Most of the box houses that failed might not have had the owners not sealed them tight and locked up prior to evacuating. Take the doors off the hinges and use them as high shelving to stack items that can't stand getting wet. Do that, and you'll need an interior decorator, not a structural engineer or new home contractor.

Seal it real good and lock it super tight, your home will fill with sewage. If the waters come, water WILL eventually be at the same level inside and out thanks to your toilets and other drains tied in with the sewer. That assumes your flat walls stood the pressure of waiting while being pounded by wind waves. Very few do, but open the doors and most would. Odds are, your wall covering and contents won't be there, but you won't need a framing contractor.

Build smart or die stupid. There is a good slogan I seem to recall from a classic of kinder lit, The Three Little Pigs. Possibly a wolf quote. Might be from the Old Testament. Could be an Almighty God quote. Nathan Hale might have said that. He was good at those catchy one-liner either-ors. If it can't be pegged and nobody claims it, I said that. You may quote Sonny, and it bears repeating with a personal touch: Build smart or die stupid, you idiots.

What we have done in the past isn't working far worse than it never worked before. I have lost faith in the system and feel it is time to abandon those idiots to go our own way. Individual homeowners must be their own emergency managers. I hope to make this place a resource. One day, the system might make it a resource.

Until intelligence returns to rule, investigate the home building alternatives available to us today. As a former dome owner and builder I can recommend Good Karma Domes, Monolithic Domes, highly recommend American Ingenuity Domes, and for lovers of the box, the very wise and affordable ICF homes, I refer you to Polysteel and Eco-Block with the understanding that I have no personal knowledge or experience in ICF. Those two look good to me, but a concrete dome looks best to me. Either will survive any hurricane I have ever been in.

Remember, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again, each time expecting a different result. I have hurled many inflamitory charges at the experts and the professionals, but give them their due, at the very least, they are all insane.

Email  George "Sonny" Hoffman

• Surviving in the Womb of Katrina
• Commentary on the state of emergency management
• Hurricane Survival Tips
• Building Smart and Building Dumb
• The Geodesic Dome (smart habitat for coastal living)

Sonny's other writing:

• Vietnam Essays
• Commando Grammar Guide
• Student's Guide to the Internet (very dated material but amusing for that reason)

Waveland

Mississippi Coast