As more intense storms threaten the livability of places like coastal Florida, this community in Fort Meyers, FL is employing smart, sustainable solutions to weather what comes. I know several people who were personally affected by the recent hurricane and I hope that developers, utility companies, and the state and local governments can adapt to protect residents.

The following submission statement was provided by /u/PhilipGreenbriar:

As more intense storms threaten the livability of places like coastal Florida, this community in Fort Meyers, FL is employing smart, sustainable solutions to weather what comes. I know several people who were personally affected by the recent hurricane and I hope that developers, utility companies, and the state and local governments can adapt to protect residents.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/xxc10h/a_florida_community_built_to_weather_hurricanes/irb7g07/

Which most businesses wont as it will cost more money to build and reduce profits.
Im in texas and look at our power grid. Massive black outs and lots of deaths with that winter storm, and the electric provider oncor has made massive profits but has not done anything to improve the grid conditions. Climate change is making storms stronger but yet companies wont improve infrastructure to match it.

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You would think that at some point making significant repairs and dealing with outages is more expensive than improving infrastructure

I wish I knew about this place before this article because I bet it's gonna be even more expensive to live there after this, both CNN and NPR have boosted this story now.

Working for a utility company, the biggest difference for this community is the investment in underground. Poles and overhead infrastructure is what gets damage in most storms.

Of course, underground isn’t new. It’s just very expensive to install and difficult to maintain and work on during trouble scenarios.

All that said, I’m sure the solar is a nice backup to when your main delivery system from the grid goes down. But the big distribution lines rarely go down, so that’s not as critical.

As a Floridian myself the idea of underground power lines just seems so blatantly obvious. I know it’s not reasonable to expect all lines to be buried immediately, but all new construction is a no brainer. Then as we service and replace old parts of the grid that’s when it can be moved underground. Hurricanes arent going to stop hitting the state, it’s time we actually do something to stop the needless suffering we all go through when we inevitably lose power

I think this is the wrong direction tbh. Instead of building the equivalent of a mars base to survive the elements it would be more appropriate to build in less weather prone places instead and maybe stop polluting do damn much so the weather stops going crazy.

Floridian here too but I used to work a lot with construction sites.

The main concern for a lot of people/businesses is that should something break underground, it'd be a bitch and a half to fix, especially since digging less than 4 ft down will get you nothing but groundwater from the aquifers. Most other places don't have to worry about that. The majority of Florida, say for the Panhandle does.

Floods from recent storms would make it even more challenging to repair since now you either gotta pump the water out, redirect it, or let it dry/sink down to the point where you can dig... and that last part can take a long time.

Plus, depending on where you are, the groundwater can be so contaminated with pollutants that you're putting workers' health at risk and may even cause more environmental damage should that water sink any lower or get accidentally redirected to a cleaner source. Miami, for example, has a lot of groundwater contaminated with Arsenic. Imagine what would happen if that arsenic-ridden water mixes with flood water and travels to, say, Biscayne Bay (which currently is undergoing major cleaning operations due to previously mentioned contamination), or worse, a local community? The short answer is lots of angry people and a really expensive lawsuit.

A downed powerline is easier to repair because all you have to do to fix it is physically look for it, replace the cables, and prop it back up. Yes, there are also scenarios in which bad things can happen but it's a hell of a lot cheaper and a lot less messy than digging for cables.

In short, it makes sense for most places, but there's a lot more to it here in Florida and there are many other reasons why companies are shuffling their feet.

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Seems like the smart move for our future. Sure beats shooting each other in the face over politics!

Places such as?

Like the saying goes an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Governments don't give a flying F though. Just look at covid. Estimates show we could have prevented COVID from spreading by investing 100 billion or something or even way less. COVID has cost the us over $2T and counting. Lol no hope for idiots to be mindful of future consequences that won't affect them directly.

One of their big solutions is being 30 miles away from the coasts. It’s not something you can do to fix existing communities. Something is eventually going to happen with insurance; they are leaving the market in droves and the last-resort carrier in Florida is ballooning. At some point they’re going to have to refuse to rebuild in areas where things keep getting destroyed.

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I have 0 sympathy for residents that keep building the same house in the same place every year after a hurricane and expect a different result. Global warming, insurance companies and cost of materials, I would get the hint to do something else. Just insane to me

I read this story and immediately looked at home prices in this community. My question: Are the homes that expensive because of their location? Like are similar homes in neighboring communities going for that much, or are the homes that expensive because of all the sustainable solutions incorporated into the design of the community?

Note: I think all new developments should be built following this model, and tailored for the local environment.

They were already had a premium price tag before Ian.

they're fucking 30+ miles from the coast

XD

ofc they did better

yes im all for solar power and/or redundancy and sustainability

That requires thinking long term

Seems that they haven't got there yet

That ship my friend sailed a while ago. Anything we do now is too little and far too late

“That’s a problem for people in the future. Right now, we just care about our next quarterly earnings report.” -them, probably

I mean, being more than 20 miles inland likely helped this community escape with barely a scratch tremendously.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

The tire rolled down the road fell.

A Florida community built to weather hurricanes endure.

Look at a map I'm sure you'll come up with something.

The people who work for these utilities like the electric utilities in Texas profit from these repairs. The more repairs and upgrades needed, the more justification there is for their jobs. And a lot of the funding comes from the government. And if not, they have a monopoly anyway, so they can just raise rates.

That’s bs. It is capital cost vs repair cost. Once it becomes profitable all companies a will build like this.

One would think that with any common sense, frankly insurance should only be paid out to people on the condition that they relocate away from hurricane prone areas.

“30 miles inland”. Well houses closer to the ocean are just kind of screwed then aren’t they?

North - massive snow storms

Midwest - tornados

West - earthquakes and flooding

South - hurricanes

Once again, places such as?

And politicians that are willing to do things that won't directly affect them and their term.

They don't give a fuck if they can't claim responsibility for the improvements.

"to big to fail"

Yes, it's good to build to endure extreme weather events. However, we are more interconnected than many preppers want to accept. In this instance, this community will likely receive property insurance quotes that are very high because rates assume average claim costs. "Holistic prepping" makes things sustainable not only for oneself but for one's extended community

When your busy looking at that map, why don't you notice that major cities are built near water? Coincidence? Lol

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You say that like voters can think long term. No one votes for a candidate making intangible, long term promises.

Yeah, that's true.

We're fucked

I'm sure you thought this would sound a lot smarter that it does.

Lol so you're rude and an idiot.

As a rule of thumb I try not to google info for morons but I made an exception here to show you how truly stupid you are:

https://amp.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2014/09/10/340082.htm

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The community is located 30 miles inland to avoid coastal storm surges.

they built the place 30 miles away on purpose. part of the design to avoid hurricane damage.

That's our secret, we've always been fucked

or developed to current hurricane proof guidelines. Oh you don't have have the requirements met. Insurance denied.

So everyone moves to MI, which the report failed to include can be shut down for a week at a time multiple times per winter due to blizzards. Additionally MI spends on average 800mil clearing snow and 1bil repairing infastructure due to winter storms which your link fails to include.

Curious? Does anyone in Florida have a Tesla solar roof or Tesla battery? Heard there was a lot of red tape in Florida. Residents who put deposits down been waiting for years.

Being preventive doesn't give votes in short terms. Simple as that. I think people give a F. But greed > people.

If only there was some sort of publicly-chosen authority that could require business to do the right thing for their constituents and the future of the state…

> Wilkerson says he and his wife moved here from Illinois. "We'd almost been ready to build north of Tampa, on the Gulf," he says. "And then the last hurricane came through and reminded me that ... I want to be in a place where I don't have to evacuate."

Says the man who moved from Illinois…..to Florida…

They’re also a new community with no mature trees or yards full of junk that could fly around and damage infrastructure.

Can someone please explain the headline to me? Is it wrong or it some kind of grammatical stunt only native speakers know about?

For some reason it auto populates weird with the share. If you click through the whole headline is there: One Florida community built to weather hurricanes endured Ian with barely a scratch

No red tape getting solar but I don’t know about Tesla specifically. I opted out of a battery, but I don’t know that it’s an issue at all

There were plenty of great buys in the wake of hurricane Michael FWiW

That's not quite an accurate way to put this. While you are right that the underground power lines certainly help things and eliminate poles that are susceptible to being blown over, for Babcock Ranch the solar is not a nice backup, it is the primary electric source. The adjacent 870 acres solar power facility that is run by Florida Power and Light, is the primary power for the town. It is essentially a micro grid, connected to the rest of Florida's grid. They get their juice from solar, and the excess goes to the greater grid. It isn't a backup. Some people have opted to put their own solar panels on their house, but that's not really part of the equation.

I’ve been digging around. You can get solar panels in Florida seems like Tesla solar panels or Tesla batteries are not available here.

I live in Michigan now but I was born and raised in Florida. A lot of my coworkers or friends that are native to Michigan will ask me about hurricanes when I mention I grew up in Florida, and I'll comply with a horror story or two of losing power for weeks at a time or having water flood up to our front door or trees falling around the house, all the usual things. People are usually amazed anyone can live through stuff like that.

The actual secret is I grew up in Tallahassee. It was that bad there, and we might as well be in middle Georgia for how much hurricanes actually affect the area. Living by the coast you might as well kiss your property goodbye. There's not much long term you can usefully do.

I live here. We bought in Sept last year just before things seemingly “peaked” which in my opinion in our community, seemed to happen around March/April when we closed (new construction). The pricing here remains inflated still versus when we bought and wildly more expensive than just 2 years ago or so which I think the same could be said everywhere.

With that said, it is very much supply and demand still in the community. We are at a little over 2,000 homes I believe and for the longest time, demand was vastly outpacing supply (again like the rest of the country). However, things are starting to even out a bit here as evident by some price cuts and pushy sales tactics that certainly didn’t exist a year ago. I do think though that the amount of publicity in the last week following the storm will probably keep prices from bottoming out though.

Surprisingly, despite a massive amount of unsecured construction debris, there wasn’t too much of the latter that happened here. However, plenty of downed trees and damaged landscape (myself included) because exactly what you said. Not mature enough yet.

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I don’t disagree. However, the older homes and infrastructure just across the highway definitely took it on the chin way more, and they’re also 20 miles inland.

They misspelt Fort Myers so it ain't a native speaker.

And now with this economy they're making even more with relatively little higher costs.

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Fort Myers*

I looked at saw two homes for sale in Babcock, both were over $750,000 and were listed at 2400 square feet.

But that’s not the primary reason why people had power after the hurricane. The distribution systems are usually intact post storm events, and they are built to do so with steel and metal poles.

It’s the overhead delivery to houses that gets the brunt of storm impacts. Our crews along with crews across the country are down there helping right now. That’s what has to be rebuilt to get power to these communities and that’s why this community never lost it.

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Though that guy was sitting at a fancy garden table made from a solar panel.

I was mostly quibbling with your description of the solar power as merely a nice backup, not disputing that distribution lines are very sturdy in storms and the bulk of electrical issues are with local delivery by pole.

I've been researching Babcock Ranch since the development was proposed, and what I'm saying is they included local power generation in their development plan -- the adjacent solar field. That local generation, combined with underground delivery, elevated home lots and roads designed to act as flood drainage, plus being 30 miles inland, played a part in their being one of the only areas to maintain power when 2.3 million other households around them lost it.

Thanks man.

No offense, but as cool as this place sounds, I would never move to Florida. Years ago, when Disney was first building Celebration, Florida I almost bought a home. Now, Florida has become way too crazy for me. Too much pro-Trump there. I have some friends who moved to the Tampa and West Palm Beach areas back in the 90s and they are like "I thought I'd stay here forever, but now I don't know." They are all close to 60 like me. Kids are out of the house, or almost out, and they really don't want to pack up and move at this age.

Even before Florida became Trump-Land, it was a little too crazy for me.

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"somebody make massive profits" & that somebody is in charge of preventing that from happening?

Hmmm

“Weather the storm” means to “endure the storm.” Not so much a pun, as it’s pretty common to say

If you're in Texas look at everyone else's power grid: actually works. The idiot voters in Texas got exactly what they asked for.

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I grew up in south Florida but always pretty far inland. It’s cheaper living and less damaging in a storm.

I hear you.

A friend of mine moved to Pompano Beach during COVID and decided to stay there. He was like "This place isn't so bad". Then a few weeks later he told me guy in the house next to him put up a big "FUCK BIDEN" sign in his front yard. He's like "I have to drive past it every day. What kind of person puts that sign up?"

Good job npr posting this story long after others covered it.

Thanks, makes sense. Never heard of it since I‘m german that‘s why I was confused. But now I don‘t get the „endure“. Wouldn‘t it be „… built to weather hurricanes endures“ or just „… was built to weather hurricanes“?

Ahh now it all comes together. Thanks!

Ok the headline is cut in half, it all makes sense now