[onemiddleamerican]

That first picture has just GOT to be a Photoshop hoax. On the tiny chance that it’s not, the builder should get some sort of solid third party verification and feature it in a surefire competition-eliminating ad campaign.

I don't think it's a Photoshop hoax, GovernmentShrinker. If you take a look at this photo that jeffers posted (of a satellite image of what's left of the island) in #2710 you will see that house. Click on that image to zoom it way up; the house is near the left of the image, on the gulf-side, by the wide area of erosion (landmark for that "cut" is the light streak going down the water to the bottom of the image). It is the house. In-freaking-credible!

[stlnative]

Can anyone explain to me why they put this hump in the highway like this? (I have never been to the area so from this picture view it really looks odd)

http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ike_09_15/ike7.jpg

[jeffers]

I didn’t post the photo credited to me.

The photo Nauti posted IS NOT a hoax.

Those damage levels are CONFIRMED by numerous other aerial grid photos.

Manmade structures on the eastern reaches of Bolivar Peninsula, for the most part, no longer exist.

If you look at that house, you can see why it survived when others didn’t. Most were up on stilts. The stilts offer little resistance to surge and fare well. But when the surge reaches the main structure, it either floats off the stilts and then gets beat to death, or else get smashed off the stilts, end of story.

Another prime method of failure, is when the sand around and under the stilts gets washed away, with predictable results for the house resting on them.

That house has a full concrete slab at grade level around and over the stilts, no washing, no scouring, stilts remain structurally viable much longer than stilts without a slab to protect them.

I’ll bet $500 that they took one other critical step in the construction of that house too, because the slab costs big bucks, and this costs very little in comparison.

Most people depend mostly on gravity to hold structures down.

A very few go the extra step and bolt it down. Bolted structures resist upthrusts orders of magnitude better than gravity held structures.

Bolts are cheap. Forces strong enough to lift a house against gravity suck. Failure to bolt is a mystery to me.