All of Florida is at risk of hurricanes. So why aren’t impact windows or shutters required statewide?

The recent spate of hurricanes has made clear that no one living in the state is safe from their destructive effects.

And yet, a $150 million state-funded grant program that will provide up to $10,000 for home-hardening improvements isn’t available for most or all residents of 45 counties in central or northern Florida.

That’s because they live outside the state’s “wind-borne debris region,” a U-shaped zone that mostly encompasses the southern part of Florida, the western Panhandle, and a narrow swath within a mile of the state’s Atlantic and Gulf coasts. New homes within the region are required to be built with opening protection features — including hurricane shutters or impact windows — that make them better able to withstand destructive forces of wind and rain.

Analysts identified the wind-borne debris region by projecting which parts of the state stood a 3% probability of experiencing winds of 140 mph or more within 50 years. Within a mile of the coast, the threshold wind speed is 130 mph.

Some experts believe it might be time to consider designating the entire state as a “wind-borne debris region,” which was last expanded in 2010. In addition to making new homes more sturdy, the expansion would qualify more owners of those homes for discounts that insurance companies are required to provide for those features.

Expanding the wind-borne debris zone would also make more homeowners eligible for the $10,000 state grants, since those are limited to improvements that qualify for insurance discounts within the region.

“I think it should be looked at, as we get more of these storms that are more and more intense,” says Mike Silvers, technical director for the Florida Roofing and Sheet metal Contractors Association, a 101-year-old trade group that participates in reviews of proposed changes to the Florida Building Code.

Map issues

Leslie Chapman-Henderson, president and CEO of the nonprofit Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, blames some of the weaknesses of the wind-borne debris region map on politics.

Prior to 2006, the region encompassed large sections of Okaloosa, Walton, Washington, Bay, Franklin, Dixie Levy and Bay counties. But state legislators in the region called for their Panhandle counties to be carved out. “They said, ‘we don’t need what they have in Miami because we don’t get those kinds of hurricanes,’” she said.

Then in October 2018, Hurricane Michael came ashore between Panama City Beach and Cape San Blas, producing hurricane-force wind gusts across the Panhandle for four hours before moving into Georgia. It was the first Category 5 hurricane to make landfall in the United States since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Category 5 hurricanes have winds of 157 or greater miles per hour.

Because of the 2010 revisions, only homes within a mile of the coast in Bay, Franklin and Gulf counties were in the wind-borne debris zone requiring opening protections. Yet in Bay County alone, 1,500 structures were destroyed and another 45,000 structures were damaged. Hundreds more structures were damaged in Franklin, Gulf, Wakulla, and Gulf counties.

The storm was estimated to have caused $18.4 billion worth of damage in Florida.

Hurricane Ian came ashore in Southwest Florida as a Category 4 storm with sustained winds of up to 150 mph. Charlotte and Lee counties, which are in the wind-borne Debris Region, absorbed Ian’s earliest blows and a catastrophic storm surge, but then the storm headed northeast toward Central Florida, into counties outside the wind zone, before exiting through Brevard County with 65 mph tropical storm gusts.

The wind-borne debris region was not a good predictor of destruction. Counties completely or primarily outside the region, but that were damaged enough to qualify for federal disaster assistance included Polk, Pasco, Orange, Seminole, Lake, Highlands, Osceola, Brevard and Volusia.

Chapman-Henderson toured Southwest Florida after Ian and noticed “a bright red line” between homes built before and after March 2002, when the Florida Building Code, which contained a long list of new construction improvements, took affect. “There were success stories even on Sanibel island,” on of the hardest-hit areas.

With hurricanes more rapidly intensifying and producing more rainfall, Chapman-Henderson would like to see the strictest opening protection requirements of the wind-borne debris region extended into inland counties like Polk, Lake, Orange and Seminole.

“There’s a strong case for taking all of the most stringent requirements and applying them to the rest of the state,” she said. “The storms have shown us that they don’t play by our rules. You can get wind speeds and debris well outside the debris region.”

Impact-resistant doors

Broward and Miami-Dade are the only two counties in the state to have requirements for impact-resistant garage doors and exterior doors. Chapman-Henderson would like to that requirement expanded as well.

Compared to doors required to be resistant to wind pressure, impact-resistant doors must be able to withstand “large missile impacts” that can puncture them and allow wind pressure inside, making the entire house vulnerable to blowouts due to high internal pressure and suction pressure.

Outside of Broward and Miami-Dade counties, if garage doors within the wind-borne debris region have windows, only the openings must be impact-resistant, not the entire door.

Whether realistic prospects exist to expand the wind-borne debris region anytime soon is questionable. When the subject came up for debate in 2006, not even then-Gov. Jeb Bush or Kevin McCarty, the state’s insurance commissioner at the time, could sway the Florida Building Commission to require impact-resistant glass or shutters throughout coastal Panhandle counties, according to published reports.

Homebuilders argued that a stricter code would drive up new construction costs.

But Silvers, representing builders and sheet metal workers, said the industry doesn’t want to save money at the expense of leaving Floridians vulnerable to losing their homes in hurricanes. “We have to do better,” he said, “and if we have to spend more now, it’s better to than spending more later.”

Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071, on Twitter @ronhurtibise or by email at [email protected].