STANDING TALL
Officials say most elevated housing survived
When Hurricane Irma savaged the Florida Keys, most stilt houses stood firm, even those with major structural damage. Above, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents check on a stilt house on Torch Key.
For the iconic stilt homes of the Florida Keys, perched on concrete columns rising 12 feet or more above the ground, Hurricane Irma and its powerful storm surge was the ultimate test.
Most of the elevated houses passed.
The initial assessment from Monroe County officials indicates that newer houses built on reinforced concrete pilings and sunk into rock — not sand — survived the storm that officials said wiped out more than 25 percent of housing stock.
Assistant Monroe County administrator Christine Hurley said she has not heard of problems with stilt houses anywhere in the Keys, and an initial assessment in Key Largo backs that up. Still, she said, “There might be substantial damage in the Lower Keys, but we have not seen that yet.”
But reports from others who have been eyeballing the destruction along the 100-mile island chain confirm the stilt homes have held up.
When the Category 3 hurricane roared ashore Sunday, pushing seawater from the Atlantic Ocean across miles of the Overseas Highway, the surge carried with it everything in its path, including many homes which were not elevated.
In the past two decades, most of the houses and commercial properties in the Keys have been built at least 10 feet or more above the flood plain, Hurley said.
“After multiple storms hit the Keys, including Wilma and Andrew, where flooding occurred, we realized we had to move up to another standard,” she said.
That standard is spelled out in a map that specifies how far above ground each structure must be, according to location. There are only two zones in the Keys — one in Key Largo, another in Key West — where any building can be erected that is not elevated, Hurley said.
A new development called Key Largo Ocean Resort, in Key Largo at Mile Marker 94, is an example of a modern stilt home.
“These stilt homes are sitting on poured concrete columns reinforced with rebar,” said project manager Agustin Menendez, as he pointed to about 30 pastelcolored houses congregated like long-legged wading birds.
The pilings on the homes at the development being built by Denis Construction
of Miami are augered 8 to 10 feet into the lime rock, he said.
“It’s the strongest base foundation you can have here in the Keys,” he said. “It also stops the house from swaying side to side. No movement, no cracks in the structure, no nothing.”
The majority of existing structures in the Keys were built in the 1970s and 80s, when stilt homes were not as popular, Hurley said.
That accounts for much of the devastation that Hurricane Irma left in its wake, because of both storm surge and winds that gusted well above 130 mph.
On Cudjoe Key, nearly every residence was damaged in the 69-acre Venture Out Resort, a community of RVs, mobile homes and permanent houses. Some were little more than scattered rubble. Even homes built on concrete stilts, but framed in wood and sheet-rock, were damaged. But the stilts did not fail. And there is a reason for that, said Sheldon Storer, president of North Carolina-based Topsider Homes, which manufactures modular homes erected on stilts in the Keys and through the Caribbean
“When storm surge comes in, it moves in and through the pilings and doesn’t meet resistance. Water just goes around it,” he said.
On Little Torch Key, the stilt home of Bill and Donna Thompson in Jolly Roger Estates was heavily damaged when timbers from a neighbor’s house flew through a door fitted with impact glass.
“I was stunned when I came back and saw this,” said Bill Thompson, 66, retired from Pratt & Whitney in Palm Beach County.
But the house stood tall, and the Thompsons said they will rebuild.
On No Name Key, stilt homes also withstood Irma’s stern test.
“See that steel beam, bolted to the pilings?” said Jeremy McQuarter, who rode out the storm in a house he believed would withstand the pounding delivered by two hours of 130 mph winds. “That — along with the elevation — may be why we are still here.”