Clarifications: In this video, I rant against my local TV Meteorologists. This commentary is intended for a very specific group of local TV meteorologists and is not an indictment on all meteorologists. Also, my reflections on hurricanes not historically bringing storm surge with them is also specific to my region of SW Florida. I am very aware that many other hurricanes in Florida and throughout the world have historically brought storm surge waters.

I come from an oceanography angle here, and I love the building angle here. You describe typical wave behaviour from the structural evidence side. The reason units 5 an 6 have damage is called wave refraction, where waves bend of to an angle. Most of the power of a storm surge is in the waves. The reason pools are full of sand is because they are bellow the wave and current action, so have zero flow in them, allowing the heavy particles to fall, the reason roads are full is because they are high ridges and so also have an area of calmness behind them allow sand to deposit there. And the reason you have storm surges from my dutch perspective, because you build on swamps and sand banks that were your natural surge barriers.. If you would reinforce the slabs I think the scour will deal with the building, you will get very mean currents instead. What you could do is build a small sandbank in front of the beach, that breaks the Incoming waves, but when you half submerged your building, you SOL, you need to build a boat, not a building then. You are definitely right about the retreating sea taking all with it, the waves do not take it out, as waves are (technically, breaking waves are different) stationary, all current moving forward moves back, so they move stuff by a little, current is moves it a lot. But again, really interesting to see oceanography from a structural engineers view by looking at the evidence. And more so that is very close to what I know the ocean probably did.

This man should be running the code board or whatever it's called. Clearly understands what Florida is up against👍

I'm from the Netherlands and here the thing you always hear is that you need space for the water to go. In your case in Florida that seems unfeasible because you can't make the water go anywhere because it's everywhere in case of a hurricane. I think you'd need to break the gradual slope of the beach because that forces the water higher and in part causes the surge. Here they dredge out large "canals" in the seafloor, a few hundred meters in front of the beaches, and they use the sand to make the beach higher. It doesn't get rid of the water but it breaks the surge. They do this year in year out because it erodes away just as fast as you dredge it up.

So my parents have lived in Cape Coral for more than 25 years now. They have weathered Charlie, Irma, and now Ian. Charlie did immense damage with it's winds; it was supposed to "ride up" the coast, but took a sudden right-hand (East) turn, coming ashore just north of Fort Myers at Punta Gorda/Charlotte Harbor. This meant the winds were blowing generally off-shore for most of the time the storm was in the area. With Irma, beyond the power-outages, my Parent's neighborhood took BAD damage from the "Storm Surge"...but in the opposite direction: Irma came ashore at "low-tide" and at an angle that the winds literally sucked all the water out of the canals. Seawalls collapsed; the seawalls are built to use hydrostatic pressure to hold them up, without water in the canals, the ground-water pressure collapsed seawalls all over the place. After the seawalls collapsed, whole yards slid due to subsidence. That's the flip-side of the "Storm Surge"...when the water is TOO LOW. Everyone thinks of "Storm Surge" in terms of what we saw in Ian; the SE Quadrant of the storm (on the West Coast) slamming the tide into the shore as it rides by on the coast or comes ashore. (On the East Coast of Florida, it's the NW Quadrant...)

The simple, and for me, the obvious solution: Remove the ground floor residential units and design the buildings to allow the storm surge to pass through and below the first floor dry zones. The buildings have to be designed to remove obstructions that would result in lateral force being exerted on load bearing columns. The French did this in Louisiana for residential buildings in low areas subject to storm surge. They used two approaches: they moved the buildings back from the coast line; and they designed flow ways or passages for storm surge to flow through the building instead of a ground floor obstruction that would be subjected to lateral force resulting in the building being washed off the foundation. The residence I am thinking of was built in the 1800's right on the coast, but say 1/4 mile back from the water line, and has survived many storms with no structural damage despite repeated flooding and storm surges. The residential area remains high and dry to this day.

August 24, 1992, about 11:30 at night is the first day I met mother nature everybody forgets about Andrew. There were no donate $10. There was no army reserve. We were left alone down here for at least two weeks before the national guard even arrived. This hurricane was a cat five, and nobody here was ready for it, this hurricane is underrated and forgotten about but the people who went through it will never forget

I'm not working in construction, but my eyes were "glued" to the screen. Top notch educational video. Thank You.

I have to try to express just how good I believe Josh and this channel are. I'm not an engineer. My degree is in music education and I work full time running music for a church. I'm not even all that handy around the house. I'm a nobody living in Spokane, WA from Vancouver, WA. I watch mostly finance on youtube. But I love learning, and I'm facinated by many fields of engineering. Starting with the basics: the play-on-words that is the channel name, building integrity, is perfect, clever, and descriptive. This video, along with every video on this channel, is informative, interesting, and worthy of every minute. I was going to watch on 1.5x speed in the background, and 40 minutes later I was sitting in the same spot, staring at my screen, and I never adjusted the playback speed. This guy makes me want to go back to school for engineering! Thank you for the incredible content. As with all long-lasting youtube channels, you may get tired, or have a drive to adapt and adjust over time to keep evolving. If you're ever feeling tired, know that you are really doing impactful work that is educating a lot of people. Thank you. And, if you ever have the urge to grow and change, know that you can take your time. We love the simple set, your hand drawings, and we know that there is still a whole lot of prep work for the slides and overall talking points of the video. The value is in the quality of the information and your delivery. And that will always be there regardless of any "extras" Until such a time that I can buy you a coffee, a beer, or a lunch, I hope this simple thank you will do. You have a great channel full of great videos. Very different from anything else I watch, but I enjoy it just as much or more. Thank you!!

I can understand why meteorologists have such trouble. While the tide level timing is well known, predicting the exact time a storm will make land fall is not so easily predicted further than 12-24 hrs out.

Josh, I survived Hurricane Camile in August of 1969 in Gulfport, Mississippi. My father was a Navy Hospital Corpsman attached to the SeaBees at the base there. My family and I rode out the storm in the base dispensary (clinic) along with many of the other military families residing in that area. That storm was absolutely devastating in every way: Buildings exploded from the record low-pressure (900 mbr), roofs and structures were demolished from the 215mph gusts, with sustained winds of 175mph.......... But the real killer and bringer of destruction was the storm-surge, up to 30 feet in localized areas and 15 feet generally. People who had never seen seawater from their house in their lifetimes.... Or their parents' lifetimes, were suddenly fleeing to their 2nd and 3rd floors.... only to feel the horror of their house being lifted from its foundation and begin breaking apart in the chaotic seascape that surrounded them. The hundreds of dead were failed by an alert system that couldn't track the course of the storm, a government that didn't provide any warning until it was too late to evacuate and, frankly, local lore and legend that told everyone that this was just another "gulf storm" and that everyone would be fine.

In NJ, properties on the water have bulkheads that go 30ft+ into the ground, with large rock piles in front to dissipate the wave forces. This prevents the waves from getting under the structures. The oceanside of the barrier islands also have large sand dunes with vegetation holding them together, acting as sacrificial surge delayers, as they would have to erode away first. It was very surprising to see a property on the beach in FL (where I immediately think of hurricanes) not have any kind of protection from waves. In NJ, buildings of this same age would've been lost decades ago to storms if they were so unprotected.

Meteorologists that are AMS certified at least have a base level of competence and knowledge of weather. The ones that are not are just tv personalities.

For all the problems with CTS, they didn't have a ground floor, the true ground floor was the lower parking garage. Many single family homes on the coast are built on stilts. Why would anyone use the ground floor as anything but parking? You can't build a building to resist a storm surge, so build them to allow the surge to flow through, with blow-out walls. I'm not sure of the speed of water in a surge, but there's a lot of mass moving at high speed, and the force needed to decelerate that water to zero is more that one can economically build for.

Actually, you're partially right about the "1 in 1,000-Year" storm scenario. While it's popular to think one in 1,000 years, it actually means in any given year, there's a 1,000:1 odds an event of such magnitude would occur the next year, or any year thereafter. While it does seem similar, when such a thing happens again maybe in 10 years, people say weather is getting worse, and are becoming a 1 in 10 Year events, it just meant unlucky odds that you had 1,000:1 odds both times, and got that one chance happened twice. Most popular misconception is the "1 in 100 Years" storm. If such a thing happens twice in a short pattern, it's not a more common storm, just a 100:1 chance of it happening again next year around.

I was in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina a few years ago, and I noticed the newer residential structures close to the beach appeared to have almost 15 feet on the ground level for storm surge to pass through the structures. The buildings were either just open at ground level, being used as parking shelters, or it was obvious the walls were meant to be sacrificial and easily pushed out. Some of the newer hotels seemed to have the same idea, with the apparent understanding the first floor level and contents would be allowed to be pushed out by the surge. Much of the length of the boardwalk has/had what I assume is an artificial barrier dune, but it appeared to only be enough to dissipate the energy of a surge but not stop the surge from inundating the structure on the lee side of the dune. The engineers and architects appeared to understand that water will not be denied, but at least the blow may be softened a little. According to news articles, Myrtle Beach took a pretty good hit from Ian and sustained a relatively moderate estimated $13 million in damage.

As someone who lost their house to storm surge in Hurricane Katrina (along with everyone else in my family minus one person whose home was still standing but completely flooded) I can tell you that most of the deaths were caused by the notion that "Hurricane X-in the case of coastal Mississippi, Hurricane Camille-was the worst, nothing will ever top that, and this house was fine in Hurricane X." My house was fine in Hurricane Camille-it got 18 inches of water inside. Nothing was left standing after Katrina. The only part of it that was where it had been previously was one bathtub, everything else was destroyed completely. My mom's house had survived since the 1890's, and was 28ft above sea level, and Katrina reduced it to a pile of lumber that was intermingled with the neighboring building like a giant started shuffling cards and left halfway through. At one point the local paper had a fascinatingly horrific video shot by someone who stayed in their house in Biloxi during Katrina, it started out with a little wind and rain, and then the storm surge started coming in, and then the cars started floating, and then the yard started flooding, and then the house started flooding, and then the neighbor's house started floating, and then the neighbor's house started being used as a battering ram to slowly rip their house apart. It ended with them breaking out of their attic, their house in total shreds and flooded beneath them, main roof trusses being so stressed they were shattering and sounding like bombs going off. I wish I could still find that video, but I've looked everywhere and it doesn't seem to exist online anymore.

Slight disagreement, the wind is a significant factor. The direction of the wind and the timing when it hits is important too. If the wind is coming onshore at high tide, then storm surge will be higher than it would otherwise at the same windspeed. Your other points are totally correct. Edit: As with other disasterous events, it's not just one thing, it's how they all come together.

That clip of the reporter exaggerating the wind while two people walk normally in the background reminds me of a different news clip I saw a few years back, also during a hurricane, in which the reporter chose to get in a kayak to do the report saying how bad the flooding was and a man in the background walks past in galoshes showing the water was less than a foot deep. As far as the media being disingenuous, that is nothing new or relegated to the weather. The media has been full of it for at least 100s of years, and perhaps always has been all the way back to the days of orators and town criers. The only people who ever notice are people with knowledge contradicting the media, which usually only occurs in niche topics in which the individual is well educated. Here is a relevant Thomas Jefferson quote: "To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, “by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.” Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. *The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.* I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, & etc, etc.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false." -Thomas Jefferson

Near sea level is not a good place to own property if thinking about having something of value to pass along to descendants. That includes land located well above but close to a coastline.

In Issac's Storm by Erik Larson (it was about the Galveston hurricane of 1900), there were reports of people taking axes to the bottom floors of houses to let the water in, and therefore to prevent the houses from floating away. Also, there were horrible pictures in this hurricane of water rising halfway up sliding doors before entering buildings.

I think you will find the same wave action damaged the bridge from Slidell to New Orleans during hurricane Katrina. The foundation was post and beam with roadway being pre stressed concrete stretchers. The wave action lifted the stretchers off the beams and piled them every which way on the bottom of the lake. A contributing factor I believe was also the bridge trapped air underneath as the water rose causing them to float off their beams.

As an engineer you fully understand how complex and chaotic the calculation of storm surge is, it involves the length, direction, intensity of wind over water, and water depth. measuring that length (leigh?), direction and intensity if a hurricane is virtually impossible, the best you can do is forecast when you expect it COULD be.

Have lived in Orlando area since 1987. My father was a structural design engineer (usually bridges) and I’ve always been interested in that process. And Ft. Myers Beach was the favorite place for my husband & I to get away, usually in October. Seeing the pictures after Ian took my breath away. We had been down there one time about a 10 days after Charlie. Sand was still being cleared from the streets. We stayed toward the south end of the island and our building was ok; but we saw sooo many that were severely damaged & houses, too, of course. Your analysis on the Miami condo collapse was so understandable that I’ve followed you ever since. I’m 79 yrs old now but still love learning how things work - thank you for the way you make it simple (comparatively) -- and I do trust your integrity!!!!! Keep up the good work - and stay safe!

Your theory for upward bowing and then lateral cracking of concrete is the same for geology and volcanism. Insert a pool of magma under a layer of rock and that rock layer will bow up and cause lateral cracking.

Great video as usual. One mistake though. You talked about your brother at 4:00 being surrouned by water so he'd be on an island, not landlocked as you put it. Landlocked would refer to being locked by land like a lake with no outgoing stream to the sea or a country or state with no seacoast, etc. Thanks

My engineering background is electrical, but I have always loved, and respected, elemental physics. My electrical engineering shows me that hydrodynamics is a branch of physics that covers many fields. I am a new subscriber; the pace is just a tad slow, but the explanations and forensic analysis are simply second to none in this genre: At least as far as I have seen. I got into this field because of the forensic structural analysis of the Surfside collapse, and there are videos on this topic on a number of channels and I have watched a number of them... You have imitators who are not nearly as intelligent or qualified. It is a true privilege to learn from a structural engineer of this caliber, for free, on a KZfaq channel. Kudos!

How about avoiding the storm surge? I’ve seen quite a few buildings built on stilts, the ground level used as a garage, and the upper levels seemed mostly untouched! The ground level walls were gone, but who cares? Make the lowest walls break away so they don’t stress the pilings. The structure stays safe(er) for anyone foolish enough to remain! PS: for marinas similar rules apply. A friend of mine had a well secured boat that did fine during Sandy until the floating dock the boat was secured to floated higher than the pilings the dock was secured to! Dock and boat floated away together!

It's amazing how much was learned and taken seriously from Hurricane Andrew. It was the first massive hurricane, and everyone had the attitude of "Let's not have this happen again." And it seems like today, the mentality is "We'll, if it's a once in a 1,000 years flood, then we don't have to do anything about it."

I mean the easy solution is to simply not build things so close to the beach. Have a set-back of at least a couple hundred feet from the beach with natural dunes & sand grasses to soak up most of the damage from the surge, and ease the potential for catastrophic damage to buildings.

You should take a look at the water management in the Netherlands (1/4 of the country lies below sea level)

Josh: your videos are *always* on point. And while I have an engineering education I don't think a person has to have engineering or construction experience to understand your explanations. Using drones to fly into a damaged building to take pics: I'm sure you weren't the first person to think of this but what a great tool.

Yes, water is the big killer, not wind. Remember, Hurricane Sandy was a low-end category 1 storm.

Well i know from experience of growing up on the gulf coast . In the case of florida if you already have rivers at max capacity the storm surge had no place to go . The size of the storm has alot to do with the size of the storm surge. We went thru ike here in texas and we had a 18 foot of storm surge which wiped out Port Bolivar. 1000 of homes were washed away

Momentum of the surge probably plays a major role in uplift. Something that may also be at play is floatation effects prior to a floor getting flooded. With 10'+ of surge, assuming that the windows and doors hold for while, you've got a massive amount of lift from the water underneath the slab. The building will essentially try to float off of its foundation.

As an engineer in another field, I love these explainers. Exactly the correct amount of statements of uncertainty and perfect delineation of fact versus opinion. Every new video is a "must-watch". Applause. Where can we chuck you a buck for this great content? For you, or a charity of your choice?

over a thousand views in under an hour! Congratulations, Josh, you've come a long way since the Surfside period - been a fan since then.

Another one of the reasons people are reluctant to evacuate is that the government won't let people back into the area until it's 'safe'- meaning that the roads are perfectly clear, and the power and water are on. It can often be weeks after the storm before property owners are allowed back into the area, and even longer for people who rent. I understand that they think they are keeping people safe, but what they are really doing is making it unfeasible for folks to evacuate.

Storm surges do occur pretty frequently. Mexico Beach on the panhandle experienced several feet of storm surge. I visited shortly after the weather cleared, and there were high water marks over head high on most of the buildings near the beach.

Important to remember how much the debris component of the storm surge will add to both lateral and upward forces. Any objects individually or collectively similar in mass to large logs smashing around underneath the slabs will exert an extraordinary variety of sudden and persistent forces both lateral and buoyant (upward).

I am waiting to hear "wave action." The rising water will be osculating, rising up and down as it encounters the buildings, creating an osculating dynamic load on the concrete, pushing up and down, back and forth, and adding to the chaotic mixing seen in the debris.

Thanks for another great video Josh. We saw a lot of storm surge during our brief residence in Louisiana. After looking at stilt houses along the coast that were heavily damaged, our daughter decided someone needs to make houses that can float to rise with the surge but have anchors so they come back down at their original location after the water recedes. Or my husband's idea that the entire coast of Florida should be state park starting from the water line to 5 miles inland. Build it all back from the water.

I thought the importance of storm surge had been understood since 1915 when the city of Galveston was erased by a hurricane storm surge

Two things I have questions about re: the fallen slabs ... 1) what would their behavior be with water pushing up from underneath, after the ground scoured away 2) how would those slabs behave with an entire room full of water on top of them? That's a LOT of weight! Edit: you answered both!

I'm from southern Louisiana and I've been through some doozies and it's the flooding that gets ya where we are, whether coastal flooding with storm surge or just rainfall. Even by the time the Hurricane has made landfall 30 miles south of us the wins have weakened to where we maybe get category 2 level of 70-90 mph sustained but the water coming from above and below is the real devastation.

It is useful to remember that no one thought that Florida's peninsula could be habitable by more than a very few people. The 1st guy to develop it went bankrupt. Almost all of it was off and on wetlands. People today have very little info on what the terrane was like. I would expect almost all of our peninsula to be subject to being under water off and on. In SE Fla where I grew up (since 1953) we have canal after canal constantly draining the lane. In the 1950's just a few miles in from the intracoastal few people lived due to the water piling up off and on.

Wow, you have taught us a lot. Many good points raised, many questions, some reasonable answers. I suspect there are many more questions and possibilities of factors and issues yet to discover. You are at the cutting edge of much that needs to be learned and understand. It is obvious as Nicole showed that there may not be much time to learn and fix issues. Thank you for taking the time to share with us. I live in a part of the inland pacific northwest which has few readily visible dangers. But you have shown me that we need to wake up and consider what dangers we have much more carefully and take action to prepare.

Hydraulics are incredibly powerful. Just look at a John Deere Bulldozer or backhoe and what those relatively small tools can do. I think the water dislodged the slabs from the bottom too Josh! Great video!!

you explain things so well. Your videos are so interesting. Truly a learning experience that you are able to share in such a clear manner.

In undergrad engineering school, we built a concrete canoe for a race - IE Buoyancy and displacement can be significant. Have designed manure pits that are placed on flood plains where the water table is high at different times of the year. The pits had sufficient displacement to allow flotation thus the design had to address that.

Fascinating....You are such a brilliant educator..Thanks for your time!

Thanks for highlighting the damage following Ian. I can assure you one thing, if you happen to be out in the Gulf of Mexico, keep a sharp eye out for refrigerators floating. The amount of debris bobbing around will get your attention. Thanks Josh.

Finally got around to watching this. Absolutely fascinating. Thank you for making these videos.

Your videos are so fascinating. I love it when I see a new one has been uploaded. Thanks for sharing your time and talents. 😊

Man, outstanding stuff as always. You’ve raised an outstanding point about storm surge. When typhoon Odette hit near my other house in the Philippines (it came through unscathed, thankfully), the winds leveled a massive chunk of Siargao, but the real damage was areas near the water. Then where it moved towards Cebu and the Visayas, the winds weren’t anywhere near the factor that the storm surge was. It devastated areas anywhere close to shore. Same with typhoon Yolanda in 2013, that hit Tacloban. Thousands died from the surge, not from winds.

Thank you, Josh. I love your videos. So informative & thought provoking. I agree with the comment that you should be involved in developing building codes - you always see things that others seem to miss and you are VERY passionate about what you do and keeping people safe. That's HUGE. ❤

Another great video Josh. You bring up an another side of the forces of nature on a structure that most wouldn't think of or try to figure out how to prevent. Great job...!

I was a Structural Concrete Contractor in Los Angeles area & we did parking structures for cars and or framed buildings above. It is my understanding that, as you pointed out, structural concrete is not engineered for much, if any, uplift. In our deck slabs the area between the supports, the columns (with dropheads for punch thru) or beams , all the rebar was mainly on the bottom in both directions. There was some top iron over the column or beams that went about 1/3 the way into the middle bay. After retiring I got into Construction Defect Investigation as an expert. We went to Biloxi after Katrina to work on the MGM Beau Rivage hotel for mold, mostly, but the 3 level parking structure on the west side of the hotel had the second floor structural parking deck totally removed from uplift & there were no pieces anywhere around the structure. It even took the ramp. One lone limo on the top. The surge took several of the barge casinos & carried them a 1/4 of a mile inland. Water is amazingly powerful when it's angry.

Great information as always! Thank you!

Little correction for you at 4:30 a 1000 year storm is not about it's chance of happening in a thousand years, it's about it having a 0.001 (one one thousandth) chance of happening in any one year.

I think there are two philosophies to deal with damaging forces: Either to build so strong that the building can resist them. That would be like a ship that is able to ride out a storm. Or to build it so that there is some sacrificial damage that reduces the power of the waves so the main structural part of the building stands up. In Germany houses on low lying lands where built that way. Basically four columns in the corners with clay walls between them. The clay will give in but the columns will stand. With very little remaining resistance to the waves the columns have no problems supporting the attic and the roof. On the upper floor the people would assemble and wait out the storm under the thatched roof. They lost everything but survived.

Very perceptive structural analysis. You give me "new eyes" on looking at forensic evidence! Thanks much!

Great content! Thanks for sharing!!

Love the channel ! Amazing work.

I'm an electrical engineer (designing integrated circuits) so my area of practice probably couldn't be further away from yours, but I really enjoy your videos. I also really enjoy Grady's videos over on Practical Engineering and almost all the EV videos put out over on Munro Live, and their channel sizes show that there's an audience for nice clear explanations of our built world, so here's hoping you are able to reach their size.

I agree with the assumption about the wave surge going under the building and pushing up on the slabs, but I would add that the force and momentum of the surge, dead ending at the opposite end, would be compounded like a water hammer affect. And the subsequent back and forth movement of the water under the slab, like a top loading washing machine with back and forth agitating, would then cause the slab panels to collapse. A very good presentation of the theory. I enjoy watching and listening to you.

Another terrific video, Josh. I'd love to see a follow-up with how the underlying superstructure is evaluated to determine what repairs may be necessary, or if an entire building must be demolished/rebuilt. Units being stripped clean of all "innards" including floor tile, slabs destroyed, etc. shows the awesome power of the surge, but what effect might it have on the massive columns and pilings? What sorts of things do engineers look for to determine if the superstructure has remained sound after an event like this?

Love the rant. Thank you for the truth.

Wow, really incredible stuff, thanks for the comprehensive covering of this appalling storm damage.

Great content as always!

Just watched this new video and fully agree with your assessment of the forces of storm surge.. I worked in Mississippi after Katrina and all of the damage was incurred from the surge. I stood in homes that survived that were protected from the winds for the most part , but still suffered catastrophic damage from the surge. As a concrete finisher in the north I have seen what water does during the freeze thaw cycles and can fully see the effect you pointed out in the floor of the condos. Btw, I have been saying for years, if meteorologists quit sensationalizing storms people might listen if something big actually happens.

Interesting as always. It really shows what storm surge, or any massive amount of water flow, can do to anything in it's path.

I live on a barrier island hit by hurricane Sandy in 2012. All the new buildings have the first floor living space about 10 to 12 ft above grade. Garages underneath with breakaway walls or paths for the water to flow through.

Your channel is the best. One day you should make a 10 series videos, with everything about building a new building, from start to finish. Also, FLOOD WALLS is my ideal to protect buildings from storm surge

Jake I absolutely love your ability to show the great details of what storm surge can do and how (for now) it’s kinda unpredictable ish and we need more study. The central Texas coast knows full well how incredible storm surge is. I’m so glad to see hands on evidence in such detail what I have been told about growing up. Please release more data as you can because it’s so important. I know releasing your footage has some risks and I want to thank you and the properties for the willingness to educate and potentially save lives. Please keep us updated. Side thought would a slab of a composite materials to allow some deflection have helped in this scenario? I don’t know that the technical terms are but there are some grout like materials that have a polymer to allow for expansion and contraction with little to no cracking over repeated cycles of expansion and contraction.

What you called 'a rant I call truth n concern with passion. Beautiful Sir.

After Ian did what it did I was reminded of a TV movie from I believe 80 or 81 called Condominium...it's posted here on youtube on other channels. It talks about storm surge coincidentally...good TV flick. The way the floors failed partially with the cracking and total is a good example of just how much of a force water in motion truly is. Your videos are always in depth and looked at in many ways Josh. I don't know what a preventative fix could be but something does need to be done to stiffen the building codes in hurricane prone areas. With Ian and seeing as it was slowly moving I couldn't help but wonder if CTS were still standing and this scenario played out on the eastern side how it would have fared. Thanks for the great videos as always!

This was a truly excellent, informative video. You're absolutely right about the talking weather heads that pass for "meteorologists" in the media today. IMHO, I believe they abandoned a serious approach years ago when they saw their "news" reporter colleagues having so much fun with stories that bear only a passing semblance to reality, and wanted to join the party. Not every last meteorologist, of course - there are still those that take their work seriously and do a very good job. But far too many are nothing more than not-serious entertainers.

Thank you, very informative!

I think you are correct on the storm surge pushing up the concrete slabs. I have experienced a micro version of when the tide changed on the Yaquina River in Oregon. I was station there in the coast guard. I was on the 52 foot motor life boat victory . We were turning to port when 7' wave rose and broke next our MLB. I have seen large storms producing over 36' waves. The buoy at 3 miles is 18 ' out the water and 18' below. The waves were break at the 100 fathom curve (600") and were miles long. As these smoking curlers over took the buoy the waves were at twice as high as the buoy. After the waves swept past the buoy was laying on surface pointing seaward. A cubic yard of seawater (3x3x3) weights 2160 lbs and has immense force.

Your slab theory is basically what destroys piers. And those condos were essentially piers.

Here in Australia, when we lived in a cyclone (hurricane) zone for a period, we were all told NOT to go outside like those stupid 'reporters' in case of decapitation from flying debris. Also in Australia there is an official emergency communication system, directly to people's mobiles.

My SE Fl beach condo was built in 1974 and they had the sense to make parking on the ground level and the apartment spaces higher in case of surges.

excellent information! thanks!

Mastery in every video. Thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge!

Those of us that survived hurricane Andrew are well aware of what a storm can do but a clarification we had a h*** of a storm surged in South Florida from it. Another thing that differs from a hurricane to hurricane is whether they contain tornadoes.

Josh all these pictures that you are showing reminds me of Pascagoula Bay and the Old "Southern Belle" types of homes that were in that area of Pascagoula MS after Hurricane Katrina Hit. These were all massive two story homes. When the waters came in they just sucked everything out of the bottom floors and then took it with them out to the bay. The top floors where sitting on top of what was once "first floors". We were just driving around looking at the damage from the outside. In some cases all that was left on a lot would be a toilet or a refrigerator or parts of a chimney. I am from NC. The church I was attending at that time in 2005. One of our church members brother was a member of a church down there and their church members homes had incurred a lot of damage. When drove down there in October to start rebuilding the infrastructure in homes.

This is very interesting! Thank you Mr P!

You are a very wise and educated man!

Storm surge is driven by the direction of the hurricane. You have to take into account which part of the storm passed over the area in what direction and from where. Storms hovering by the coast are likely to produce a bigger surge than one coming straight in from deep water. Surges can even be very different in areas that are pretty close to each other. The counterclockwise winds of a hurricane in the northern hemisphere means on Florida's gulf coast, the surge is being pushed in a north- northeast direction from the bottom of the storm, and will be worse after the eye passes. It also means that the surge will be more sudden, giving people both a false sense of security and no time to react when the water starts rising. Also alsø- insurance companies don't cover storm surge, just rain and wind. You'll need flood insurance, too. Another good storm, and insurance companies are going to make it cost prohibitive to live in Florida.

The first thing to do about dealing with uplift forces is to get an idea of the forces that the building will be experiencing from wave impact loadings and uplift forces from waves getting caught under the slabs. Computer models may be able to help. There are probably some good resources in the field of naval architecture that are worth looking into, since we’ve put a lot of effort into researching waves. You could also maybe do scale testing at a wave tank like the ones at NSWC Carderock or MARIN in Europe, or in a towing tank capable of generating waves.

This is fascinating. I have worked both as precast installer and quality control at the place that makes them, and after looking at the photos I must agree with your theory that they were lifted upwards, and slammed back onto their footings. Most of these slabs only have cables on their bottom so their only strength upwards is their weight alone, and less still if you're talking hollowcast. The cracking of the finish layer is a clear indicator of this for certain, that these slabs were bowing upward at some point. Had these floors been more strongly tied into the rest of the building, they might have transmitted may unexpected forces into the whole structure. As to how to better protect the building, possibly a system of baffles and wave breaks under the building? It's certainly a new problem that needs a lot of experimenting, Concerning new doors and windows I get the feeling they might blow out in one whole unit.

The thing with storm surge is it is incredibly variable based on the track or the storm on thus why forecasts don't always pan out. The track of the eye matters here and the surge is always the worst on the side that wind and storm motion is going toward the land. If your location isn't in this inner quadrant of the storm, you will likely see very little surge, or may even see the surge reverse like what happened in Tampa. The storm direction in relation to the coast can also matter and the motion of Ian combined with the shape of Florida to really force to water to pile up with no where do go but over the land. The tide is another factor and if a storm hits at low tide you may not even notice the surge in some places. Then there is the strength of the storm and the duration the storm has been in that state. The longer its been strong the more the surge, but sudden intense strengthening can also cause extreme surge in a more localized area. In other words, there is a ton a variables and forecasting surge is exceedingly hard. The meteorologists are creating forecasts based on threats that are within a significant percentage of occurring in any given area and when you are dealing with storms that are hundreds of miles wide, that's going to cover a good chuck of coast. There is going to be a fairly large section of that, that will not verify. It's not fair to pick on the meteorologists. Calling them liars would also be extremely offensive to any professional meteorologist as protecting life is part of the reason the do with what they do. These folks are doing the best they can with the current state of the science and technology, and they are always going to forecast in a conservative fashion when it comes to protecting life. More over the US government is constantly under funding the NWS, so better research and computer modeling is slow going. That said, People should heed thier warnings and be thankful if they do not pan out.

There were 14 category 4 or 5 hurricanes that hit Florida in the last hundred years. The Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 produced storm surges of 18 to 20 feet. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 was less than 100 years ago and devastated Miami. Ian was more like a once every 20 to 30 year hurricane.

From what I've learned watching your videos, your building example is already pretty well suited to dealing with storm surge. Acknowledging the tragic loss of belongings to the people on the first floor (I hope nobody was in those units at that time!), if the goal is to protect the load bearing parts of a building to prevent as much further loss as possible, having walls and floors that blow out around the piles and beams doing the actual support seems like a good idea. With respect to limiting the bowing slabs from the forces under the slabs, I wonder if multiple pipes running from under the building vertically to the roof could help. (I mean multiple pipes spaced at regular intervals in the middle of the slab area.) Normally, these could be used to deal with rain water runoff from the roof, but in a case like this, they could act like blow-off valves for some of that pressure. Won't save the walls, but I'm going to guess the lack of a floor is going to hinder reconstruction more than missing non-load-bearing walls. Also, whoever ran those electrics, and laid the bathroom tile... those contractors need to be hired again. Wow. 👍

You can't blame meteorologist, they are just responding to the models which have gotten better but as far as storm surge, a track small shift can make a massive difference. Also we lack enough buoy data to get a good idea of what is happening offshore with the waves and storm surge. I'm not a meteorologist, but some of this is just logic, and some is just a best guess. We really need to fund more buoy's in the Gulf of Mexico and keep the ones already there in service, often they are offline for months and months.

Being an engineer living in the Netherlands, of which the north west provinces are for a mayor part below sea level, storm surges have been an issue for the last centuries, due to sinking of the soil caused by to dehydration of peat, moor and clay soil and rising of the sea level. For centuries dikes, dams and storm surge walls have been build to keep the sea out and to keep dry feet. Due to climate change the sea level is rising and will rise dramatically. Dams and dikes are constantly improved and increased. A general coastline defense plan is necessary to be able to withstand future storm surges combined with rising of the sea level. Experts are working on this, research is being done to figure out the best methods. I think the USA needs the same, and not just in Florida, but in all states with a coastline. I don’t think building houses or condos storm surge proof is a good possibility. Heavy storm surges destroy almost everything. Only heavy dikes en storm surge walls build out of concrete or steel can withstand the forces which are released by the sea. Check out Oosterscheldekering, Afsluitdijk or Maeslandkering (with 210 m long and 22 m high doors) to see what kind of structures are necessary to stop a storm surge.

I hope and want this type of content to be free to teachers all around the world so they can have a conversation with students all around the world. It is very interesting and I think that it will get students realy invested in solving or at least dipping their toes in solving engineering and structural problems regarding the impacts of a rapid changing environment.

Interesting stuff. I'm a PE but also a weather geek. I followed Ian, particularly on radar as it approached the Florida coast. One problem was that it was forecast to go inland much farther north (Tampa bay area), so a lot of people didn't take it as serious as they should have from about Sanibel Island south to almost Marco Island. But you can blame a lot of that on the met's. If you watched the storm come in on radar, you knew Ft. Myers Beach was going to get destroyed due to the wind direction, fetch. abundance of precip, and surge. I didn't even realize there were antecedent rains which probably also contributed to a certain extent. Interesting channel. I've added you to my follow list.

Great video, thanks. On the Storm surge one of the main issues is if it will arrive on a high or low tide. Without that information it's a W.A.G. as to what things will be like. So the weather people should be watching the tide charts as well as when the storm surge may start to arrive to better inform people as to what may happen. I believe, only what I vaguely remember, that when that storm hit Nova Scotia, they were talking tides as well as expected surge. I have seen docks for boats on lakes that had the stringers solidly attached at both ends so that they wouldn't move and in the wave action of a large storm all of the top planking were pushed up an out due to the waves, 3.5" ardox nails were pushed out with of the stringers with no bending. Another consideration, were these precast flooring sections only really designed to resist downwards forces or was there tension steel in the upper portion of the precast sections. My first thought upon seeing the remnants of the floor sections was uplift from below either breaking them in the centre or pushing them up and out on one end and dropping them to the ground when the wave receded. Judging but the shape of the pile of the flooring sections there was no real tension steel in the top of it to resist upward cyclic loading from below. BUT, due to the repetitive action of the waves the beam appears to have failed due to continual over stressing upwards when the wave arrived then downwards when it receded but there still would have been some fair quantity of water left in the apartment to further over stress the section downwards. I'd imagine that If there was a structural slab on-grade without any void spaces which would have helped support the floor with the weight of several feet of water with a grade beam sunk 4-ish feet under the grade on the sea side of the building it might have survived but the contents of the units would still have disappeared.