[lonestar]

Tornados are worse not only in intensity but with short notice. With hurricanes, you have days to prepare or evacuate. Of course, hurricanes spawn tornados. There were over 90 tornados with Rita...not big but distructive.

The most amazing thing to us is that the Jersy beach houses aren't on stilts...they sit on the ground.

[muawiyah]

Depends on where you are when it comes to stilts. I stayed overnight once in a friend's house that was on the beach on stilts ~ about 20 ft high. Down the way there were houses on the beach itself.

Most of these properties are owned by the 1% ~ or their friends. For most everyone really close to the Atlantic their beach houses are throw-aways.

Up the coast in Rhode Island there are mansions on/near the shoreline which their owners call "Huts".

For a variety of reasons many of the older properties on the Jersey shore are really old ~ just totally nasty too ~ and still they refuse to burn or fall in. I suspect they are constructed from oak soaked in pine tar for decades.