‘Unimaginable destruction’: Hurricane smashes rows of houses

www.miamiherald.com ^ | 10/11/2018 | By JAY REEVES and BRENDAN FARRINGTON

[Red Badger]

PANAMA CITY, Fla.

The devastation inflicted by Hurricane Michael came into focus Thursday with rows upon rows of homes found smashed to pieces, and rescue crews began making their way into the stricken areas in hopes of accounting for hundreds of people who may have defied evacuation orders.

At least two deaths were blamed on Michael, the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental U.S. in over 50 years, and it wasn't done yet: Though reduced to a tropical storm, it brought flash flooding to North Carolina and Virginia, soaking areas still recovering from Hurricane Florence.

Under a perfectly clear blue sky, families living along the Florida Panhandle emerged tentatively from darkened shelters and hotels to a perilous landscape of shattered homes and shopping centers, beeping security alarms, wailing sirens and hovering helicopters.

Gov. Rick Scott said the Panhandle woke up to "unimaginable destruction."

"So many lives have been changed forever. So many families have lost everything," he said.

The full extent of Michael's fury was only slowly becoming clear, with some of the hardest-hit areas difficult to reach because of roads blocked by debris or water. An 80-mile stretch of Interstate 10, the main east-west route along the Panhandle, was closed.

Some of the worst damage was in Mexico Beach, where the hurricane crashed ashore Wednesday as a Category 4 monster with 155 mph (250 kph) winds and a storm surge of 9 feet (2.7 meters). Video from a drone revealed widespread devastation across the town of about 1,000 people.

Entire blocks of homes near the beach were obliterated, reduced to nothing but concrete slabs in the sand. Rows and rows of other homes were turned into piles of splintered lumber or were crumpled and slumped at odd angles. Entire roofs were torn away and dropped onto a road. Boats were tossed ashore like toys.

A National Guard team got into Mexico Beach and found 20 survivors overnight, and more crews were pushing into the area in the morning, with the fate of many residents unknown, authorities said. State officials said 285 people in Mexico Beach had refused to leave ahead of the hurricane despite a mandatory evacuation order.

Mishelle McPherson and her ex-husband searched for the elderly mother of a friend. The woman lived in a small cinderblock house about 150 yards from the Gulf and thought she would be OK.

Her home was reduced to crumbled cinderblocks and pieces of floor tile.

"Aggy! Aggy!" McPherson yelled. The only sound that came back was the echo from the half-demolished building and the pounding of the surf.

"Do you think her body would be here? Do you think it would have floated away?" she asked.

As she walked down the street, McPherson pointed out pieces of what had been the woman's house: "That's the blade from her ceiling fan. That's her floor tile."

As thousands of National Guard troops, law enforcement officers and medical teams fanned out, the governor pleaded with people in the devastated areas to stay away for now because of fallen trees, power lines and other debris.

"I know you just want to go home. You want to check on things and begin the recovery process," Scott said. But "we have to make sure things are safe."

Over 900,000 homes and businesses in Florida, Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas were without power.

The Coast Guard said it rescued at least 27 people before and after the hurricane came ashore, mostly from homes along the Florida coastline, and searched for more victims.

Among those brought to safety were nine people rescued by helicopter from a bathroom of their home in Panama City, another one of the hardest-hit spots, after their roof collapsed, Petty Officer 3rd Class Ronald Hodges said.

In Panama City, most homes were still standing, but no property was left undamaged. Downed power lines lay nearly everywhere. Roofs had been peeled off and carried away. Aluminum siding was shredded to ribbons. Homes were split open by fallen trees.

Hundreds of cars had broken windows. Twisted street signs lay on the ground. Pine trees were stripped and snapped off about 20 feet high.

The hurricane also damaged hospitals and nursing homes in the Panama City area, and officials worked to evacuate hundreds of patients. The damage at Bay Medical Sacred Heart included blown-out windows, a cracked exterior wall and a roof collapse in a maintenance building. No patients were hurt, the hospital said.

The state mental hospital in Chattahoochee, which has a section for the criminally insane, was cut off by land, and food and supplies were being flown in, authorities said.

A man outside Tallahassee, Florida, was killed by a falling tree, and an 11-year-old girl in Georgia died when the winds picked up a carport and dropped it on her home. One of the carport's legs punctured the roof and hit her in the head.

As of 2 p.m. EDT, Michael was centered about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Greensboro, North Carolina, with winds of 50 mph (85 kph). It was moving northeast at 23 mph (37 kph).

Forecasters said it could drop up to 7 inches (18 centimeters) of rain over the Carolinas and Virginia before pushing out to sea Thursday night. In North Carolina's mountains, motorists had to be rescued from cars trapped by high water.

"For North Carolina, Michael isn't as bad as Florence, but it adds unwelcome insult to injury, so we must be on alert," Gov. Roy Cooper said.

More than 375,000 people up and down the Gulf Coast were ordered or urged to clear out as Michael closed in. But it moved fast and intensified quickly, and emergency authorities lamented that many people ignored the warnings.

"Why people didn't evacuate is something we should be studying," said Craig Fugate, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a former Florida state emergency management chief. "Is there more the government can do? But we ask that every time."

Based on its internal barometric pressure, Michael was the third most powerful hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland, behind the unnamed Labor Day storm of 1935 and Camille in 1969. Based on wind speed, it was the fourth-strongest, behind the Labor Day storm (184 mph, or 296 kph), Camille and Andrew in 1992.

___

[familyop]

"Having observed cinderblock buildings in Rockport, Texas post Harvey, I can tell you that they don’t hold up in Cat 4 storms unless reinforced with rebar thru the blocks or something else like that."

That's right. The pockets in the blocks are lowered over the rebar and filled with grout. That's the vertical rebar. Horizontal rebar can also be laid every few courses with blocks made for that.

Traditional wood frame construction can also be strong with construction according to wind load designs in the Wood Frame Construction Manual (wind straps, more anchors, special anchors, other wall design considerations, etc). They can be built to withstand the winds from any hurricane that might hit, although special steel doors, laminated glass and shutters are also needed. Best done with a a hip roof, by the way, although a low gable can work.

A common problem with expecting such designs to hold up, is that corrupt builders and/or contractors will omit needed fasteners and other materials, and local governments won't want to admit to failing to inspect those. Whole developments can be built insufficiently and allowed by crook$ (big problem with hurricane Andrew).

Insurance companies tend to go along helplessly with it, eventually, and claim that a hurricane had much higher sustained winds than it really had. Histories of terrible previous hurricanes will even be revised with claims that they were milder than in reality.

Here's a clue. I lived through a hurricane that left no leaves on any trees that weren't palms--none. And all trees that weren't palms were uprooted. Most of the tall palms laid flat against the ground afterwards. The other tall palms were completely uprooted, even though they had deep roots like carrots.

Most of the power poles were broken or otherwise blown down. The damage wasn't caused by tornadoes. I was there. Everything went sideways for about...six hours, if I remember correctly. Peeking out a little from the downwind side (small space between houses), couldn't see across the street. The roar went on for several hours without changing. Couldn't hear very well during following night. There were no power or phones for several weeks afterward.

Many frame houses built for hurricanes stood, many of those minus roofs. Many brick veneered houses were leveled. Commercial buildings built without enough steel in concrete block walls were lacking walls. Most of the people in the city had evacuated prior to that hurricane hitting, so there weren't many deaths. People who remained (mostly in older neighborhoods with hurricane houses on monolithic slabs, with low-pitched roofs and much wind strap between structurals) had boarded up with plywood and lots of fasteners, parked cars between houses, etc. All of the glass exploded out of some of the cars in the small spaces between the houses. It was dark afterwards, with men with flashlights in our neighborhood taking shifts in pairs at each end of each block to watch for looters.

Mobility was only on foot afterwards. Too much debris with nails sticking out, too many power lines and power poles down, etc., for cars to get anywhere. There were many National Guardsmen, and there were curfews. "Martial law" was often mentioned in a positive way. Some signs were up around commercial areas, where ethnic looters reached out from other neighborhoods: "Looters will be shot." The looting stopped abruptly. It was very quiet and civil during the weeks to follow, with lines leading up to National Guard trucks for dry ice, drinking water, food, etc.

We cleaned up and rebuilt, for about a year.

[Blue House Sue]

In a big storm, CMU’s fall apart like a child’s building blocks.

[familyop]

By the way, the anemometers were broken during the storm. The last radio station on the air (very nearby and local) said 160 mph sustained wind with higher gusts before their anemometer stopped working. Then they went off the air. It sounded like a loud roar against the outer walls, and the walls shook. Water squeezed in under the walls (mono-slab construction). We didn’t think the walls would hold, but they did.

[17th Miss Regt]

But more importantly, LGBTQs and women and children of color were most negatively affected!

[robowombat]

Yes, Rita was a much bigger and more powerful storm than Katrina. Had it continued on its original predicted path it would have made a direct hit on Houston pushing a huge storm surge up Buffalo Bayou. The damage and probably loss of life in Houston would have made the flooding of new Orleans look anemic. Instead it veered into the piney woods of SE Texas wreaking epic damage on many small towns.

[Desparado]

I drove through the gulf coast from Florida to New Orleans after Camille. There was nothing but piles of rubble for miles and miles. And I was living in Homestead Florida during hurricane Andrew. It looked like an atomic bomb had dropped on South Dade county for a 30 mile swath all the way to the Everglades! Nothing was left standing for miles. I have yet to see that kind of destruction in any hurricane aftermath that even came close to those two storms.

[Kickass Conservative]

Here in CA you have disclose if someone ever died in a House when you sell it.

Many People will not buy a House if that happened. That was the first question the Realtor for the Chinese Couple we sold our Condo to asked.

If you’re buying a Lot they might ask if anyone is Buried on it. That scene from Goodfellas comes to mind.

[GatorGirl]

Except for Andrew. Either way, Michael was powerful. You don’t need weather gurus and talking heads to tell you how bad a storm is going to be, a well defined eye and tight cloud field is guaranteed to signal a bad storm.

[SE Mom]

https://mobile.twitter.com/ConeHeads8020?p=s

She may still have her condo. Lots of damage, but nothing like Mexico Beach.

[House Atreides]

Having done relief work on the heels of several Cat 5 storms, for most people, unimaginable is an accurate description of the sort of damage that occurs.
**********************************************
Viewing various videos of the destruction, there is a clear distinction between older buildings built under old building codes (and TOTALLY DESTROYED) and newer buildings built to meet, and frequently exceed, modern hurricane area stringent building codes. The buildings meeting or exceeding the modern codes survived with relatively “minor” damage.

[HangnJudge]

Thanks

[suthener]

Mexico Beach is the antithesis of most of thr Florida gulf coast with smaller houses, townhouses, etc. A friend had an interesting and very realistic theory. Developers will come in and buty the ruins and in a few years it will be wall to wall high rise condos. I think he’s right.

[nomorelurker]

Are you talking about Rockport or someplace else? I had good experience with much of what you said Rockport/Harvey.

[familyop]

Corpus Christi—Celia.

[familyop]

Regarding my hurricane experience, that is.

My comment about concrete blocks was separate in context and has more to do with research and building experience.

[Iron Munro]

Michael, the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental U.S. in NEARLY 50 years.......................fixed it..........

More like the 26 years since Andrew in 1992.

[trebb]

I’ve been through hurricanes and even a tornado...after going through Katrina, I found the destruction and the scope of it to be unimaginable for a bit....what kind of twit decides the best part of a story like this is that they see a crack to leverage to make light of what these poor people are going through?

[Little Ray]

It is called the “Forgotten Coast” for a reason.
I hope you are wrong...

[suthener]

“I hope you are wrong...”

Me, too. But I was reminded what Gulf Shores looked like before Hurricane Frederic and after. Before it was somewhat like Mexico Beach; a couple years later...well, look at Google Maps. Almost nothing but wall to wall condos.

[HangnJudge]

Cape San Blas got cut in two... near State Park
Gap is widening with wave action

Access road completely washed out
Near US Air Force Vetro site
Going to be a long time before homeowners
Will be able to get out there

https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/michael/index.html#13/29.7680/-85.3947