re: Unreleased footage of hurricane Katrina from New Orleans fire department documentary

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Everything else around it was completely slabbed. I drove up to it to look around. It had about 4 or 6 ~4" metal poles bolted to what apparently was the front porch. The wood cladding was gone and the poles bent to the slab. Each had 4 pretty substantial bolts thru a baseplate and into the slab. About half of the bolts were sheared off and the other half bent nearly 90°.

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My understanding having spoken with some builders and structural engineers is that houses on wooden stilts are fine until the water and wave action hits a certain height after which they simply cannot handle the torque associated with strong surge.

To survive a storm like that a house has to have sufficient elevation and be on concrete pilings that are well set in the sand.

In addition the house will fail if the windows blow out or the roof goes as is common with anything not built to the S FL storm codes now required. Even a well built new home isn’t going to handle a surge past the height of the pilings.

Realistically nothing we can build is going to survive a 30’ surge and Cat 3/4 wind on the water down there due to the storm surge potential of the area, it’s just not realistic due to cost and how it would make the house look from an aesthetic standpoint.