Floridians-What's the story with building codes in LA & MS compared to FL?

[demo dutch]

[OrlandoGator]

1. "Miami-Dade" quality stamp for roofing materials is akin to...

...California restrictions on auto emissions. It's the industry standard for hurricane-proofing.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

2. They're very strict here (Naples FL). New Orl. is much older than we are.

Most of that city was built way back when and the buildings are very old - so that's why a lot of them weren't very sturdy.

[Dudley_DUright]

3. The codes were really strengthened in FL after Andrew

especially in S.FL.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/views/y/1999/06/zarrella.hurricanes.jun10/

[Sgent]

4. Most of these damages

were done due to two things:

1) Flood waters
2) Tidal Surge

the Flordia building codes wouldn't have mattered in either of these cases. They are mostly there to deal with wind issues. You also have a different set of challenges esp. in SE Louisiana.

Miami/Dade had a large number of prebuilt and tract housing which got leveled. Most of the housing in NOLA and the coast was custom or semi-custom.

The only real building code disaster was in MS, where the floating casinos came off of their piers and proceded to trash everything 3 miles inland. Due to this, most likely the MS legislature will probably change the requirement that all casions float -- even if they can't be moved. They will alow them to using pilings to anchor them in place.

[Lost-in-FL]

5. I don't think you can't compare.

NO is basically a "bowl" and we do not have that problem here and like some here said, the construction codes are very strict here. They just made new changes for roofing, my new roof now resist 160 MPH (had roof damage last year) wind while before it was only 110 MPH.