Look, I understand storm surge, I own a beach house in Port A and went through 10 ft of storm surge and 135 mph winds during Harvey… yes 8-10 ft storm surge is bad, many old houses in downtown Port A were done, they got whipped out, but most of the modern new homes built to code did more than fine, I lost all my fences, the pool was under 2 - 3 foot of water and the trash line was 1 foot from the garage, we had a giant mound of seaweed we had to move out of the yard just to put the fences back up.. it was bad, but it wasn't catastrophic, bad yes, they lost old buildings and houses yes… my modern home built to modern code lost 6 shingles, that's it. There was water damage to alot of low level Homes in town ( all the new Home owners called it the "purging" Port A needed, clean up all the old junky places ). It was bad but nothing relatively close to a hurricane with real 15-20 foot seaside storm surge
Nothing and I mean absolutely nothing comes even remoteLy close to what Hurricane Ike did to Boilvar Peninsula. I had friends with modern Homes, built to modern code, some just a few years old…the 18-20 ft storm surge removed them from their slabs. They were gone, nothing left, washed out into the ocean. One of my customers had a brand new 3500 sqr ft house on 15 ft piers with a pool, when they went back they had to look up the street to figure out where their house once was, it was a slab with the pool filled with sand bareLy noticeable…. That's what a real 15-20 ft seaside storm surge does, it removes houses from the slab and there's nothing left.
This is why I have a problem with services like the Weather Channel overly spreading fear.. all hurricanes are bad and terrible, they cause billions in damages, but a true 20 ft storm surge you don't live through, your house is gone. From all the pics and vid's coming out so far I am not seeing this … that's all I am saying … these guys spread unnecessary fear to get views.
I'm not down playing this is a bad storm ,.. 12 foot of surge about what we got in Port A… that's about max to what I'm seeing so far