MIAMI – Hurricane season is just weeks away, and this year, we will commemorate a somber anniversary.
The season begins June 1 and Aug. 24 marks the 25th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew. We learned many lessons from the Andrew disaster, including stricter building codes, but is that changing?
"Allowing the home builders to chip away and chip away at our building codes is just ridiculous," former FEMA director and South Florida native David Paulison said.
Paulison and other disaster responders are sounding the alarm about one section of a big construction bill headed back to the Florida House from the Senate. The hundreds of updates made to international building standards every three years? They now must be automatically adapted in Florida. But in the bill, this become optional.
"That's going to put us behind, so after three or four cycles of this, we are going to be so far behind," Paulison said. "Our building codes are not going to be up to where they need to be."
Country Walk, the poster community for substandard construction after Hurricane Andrew, now has part of South Florida's strictest building codes in the country.
The builders say not to worry.
"What I think the legislation is striving to do is get the one-size-fits-all part out of this," said Trudy Burton, vice president of the Builders Association of South Florida.
Its intent, according to the association, is to avoid constant and costly changes in construction standards that make no difference in Florida's environment without compromising life-safety components of building for hurricanes and floods.
"It would automatically incorporate all changes to high velocity wind requirements," Burton said. "It would automatically update as to water intrusion. You want to safeguard your property and people from water and wind."
A Senate amendment to the bill says just that. The House already approved its version unanimously, including every South Florida rep.