As South Florida Rebuilds, Engineers Rethink Housing Codes : Hurricane: The lessons of Andrew may change building regulations and insurance coverage in other areas too.

As Hurricane Andrew’s victims continued their daily search for necessities Saturday, teams of engineers in four-wheelers fanned out from a cluttered command center in Hallandale, Fla., with a longer-range mission in mind.

Rushing to examine the wreckage of thousands of homes before repairs begin, the teams are the advance brigade in a reassessment of housing codes that could have an impact far beyond ravaged South Florida.

Additionally, the most costly hurricane in American history--coming just three years after the devastation caused by Hurricane Hugo in the Carolinas and the Loma Prieta earthquake in Northern California--is apt to spark a re-examination of ways to provide insurance against natural disasters.

The time has come, says William Petak, a USC professor and executive director of its Institute for Safety and Systems Management, “to consider an all-risk natural disaster insurance program of some type.”

The more immediate item on the recovery agenda is a review of South Florida’s building code. Although the code is already considered the most stringent in the country, the damages caused by Hurricane Andrew will be analyzed with an eye toward toughening it, officials said.

The existing codes in other storm-prone areas may receive sharper scrutiny as well. Had Andrew hit Texas rather than Florida, the damage would have been much worse because that state has a less stringent building code, said National Hurricane Center Director Bob Sheets.

Although some communities in Florida, notably the town of Homestead, were leveled, there were scores of other areas where some homes survived amid others that were demolished. The engineering teams organized in the hours after Andrew inflicted its full wrath Monday are gathering data from the homes left standing as well as those destroyed. This information will underpin the studies of building codes, as well as help Florida officials determine the current safety of building practices and the extent of code violations.

Sheets speculated that a substantial number of homes was lost here because builders and homeowners had fallen in love with skylights, high ceilings and steep roofs during a time when southern Florida was bypassed by powerful hurricanes. Current building codes allow all of these architectural designs, but Sheets argues that they are structurally unwise in hurricane-prone areas.

Some South Florida residents, meanwhile, are expressing suspicion that the problem is less one of building-code gaps than of enforcing the existing regulations. They assert that many of the damaged and destroyed homes violated codes designed to protect against wind damage.

Overall in South Florida, an estimated 63,000 homes were destroyed by the hurricane. In the six days since the storm, damage estimates have risen to $30 billion, from Washington’s initial guess of $6 billion to $10 billion and local officials’ early figures of $15 billion to $20 billion.

For the next few months, though, Andrew’s total cost is certain to be astonishing.

“In the weeks to come, the insurance companies can figure the property damage and the cost of lost contents,” said USC’s Petak. “Then you must look at other things--lost and damaged automobiles, the cost of workmen’s compensation, public sector costs, medical costs, federal costs, the costs of business interruptions. It is going to be a hell of a number before it is over.”

The economic toll of Andrew could have been far worse if it had made landfall just a few miles to the north, hitting downtown Miami and Miami Beach. As it was, the storm did just what disaster experts had been warning would eventually happen: It hit a major populated area with full force.

Andrew is now being called the most carefully tracked and forecast storm ever. Scientists going over records in recent days estimate that its highest sustained winds (of a minute or more) over Homestead and south Dade County were 140 m.p.h., with gusts to 175 m.p.h. It is quite possible, said Miles Lawrence, a forecaster at the National Hurricane Center, that these numbers will be revised upward.

Forecasters started tracking Andrew when it first appeared as a tropical depression off the coast of Africa. When it reached hurricane force, it headed unwaveringly for southeast Florida.

State disaster officials adopted a strategy of evacuating all of the areas susceptible to a storm surge that might have claimed thousands of lives, and on Saturday and Sunday as many as 800,000 Floridians were moved from harm’s way. No attempt was made to evacuate areas inland.

“We were prepared in terms of the protection of life,” said Sheets, the National Hurricane Center director. But, he added, “you cannot prepare for a (major) hurricane in terms of having no impact.” Even before Hurricane Andrew’s devastation, the insurance industry was looking at ways to mitigate the effects of natural disasters, principally through stronger building codes, better land use planning and public education. Technology exists--and codes could be written--for houses that would be virtually hurricane-proof when constructed beyond the reach of storm surges. But officials quickly note that they would be prohibitively expensive.

For many years, coastal development has gone ahead in the face of warnings of the damage that a hurricane could cause. “We continue building in places where we know that sooner or later, we are going to have a disaster,” Petak said.

Those touting the idea of government-supported natural disaster insurance point to the example of the federal flood insurance program, which came about as a result of Hurricane Agnes in 1972. That storm caused $2.1 million in damage in record-breaking floods as it swept across mid-Atlantic states and New England after making landfall.

The flood insurance program is financed partially by taxpayers and partially by premiums, with all the funds going into a pool that is tapped when a flood-related disaster occurs.

Even before Andrew, there was increasing talk of a broader program of insurance against all natural disasters. The idea is to find some way to spread the financial risk for disasters among all of the states and to find a substitute for federal disaster relief.

Historically, the insurance industry has opposed federal involvement in the insurance business. But events in recent years have raised the specter of a series of disasters virtually bankrupting it.

Agnes was the United States’ first billion-dollar hurricane, and since then there have been nine others. In 1983, damage caused by Hurricane Alicia in South Texas reached $2 billion. In 1989, the price tag for Hugo’s destruction hit $7 billion.

In the case of Andrew, not only did downtown Miami and Miami Beach have a near brush with devastation, so did New Orleans when the storm headed for Louisiana.

“The insurance industry realizes that there is potential for great catastrophe,” State Farm Insurance Co. executive Robert Odman said.

To expedite South Florida’s recovery, insurance companies are setting up disaster teams, and homeowners have been promised that money will get into their hands promptly--within eight to 10 days after claims are filed with adjusters.

Meanwhile, those with homes still standing have been patching roofs and putting plastic over windows to prevent afternoon thunderstorms, common in the area this time of year, from ruining what Andrew did not already destroy.