That’s a good question. We do, now. But most of us can’t buy a new house, so we live in an older house. We don’t have a stone quarry anywhere nearby, so no tradition of stone houses, more frame houses because it’s hot and there wasn’t air conditioning so we built ventilated lighter houses that were cooler in the summer, there are still a lot of them around.
Yes, home hardening is one factor and even here in Florida, the building codes have been updated and the state provides matching funds for making improvements to existing houses (you apply, it can take some years to get to the front of the line) we got storm windows this way, and we got a strong metal roof when we needed to replace the roof covering. It just takes a really long time to change out or update the stock of houses.
And also, even though it seems like houses are getting knocked down every 5 minutes, there are still houses in Tampa built around 1900, it’s not that common in most cities. I was born here, am over 50 and haven’t even had to evacuate yet, assume it’s coming eventually but is not a frequent event here. Last direct hit around 1925.
People are so flippant about “just move” but I was born here, have seen the city get better, love it, have a good job, most of our kids still live nearby, its really expensive to move anywhere and pretty nice here most of the time still, and as a climatologist told my kid when they asked, probably will be ok through their lifetime.
Stone houses? Are you thinking of castles?
In Europe most houses are made of brick and/or concrete, no need for a quarry anywhere nearby.
Also, the heavier the house the better it does when it’s hot. In hot places of Europe, traditional houses had very thick walls, small windows and are painted bright colors to reflect light (and heat).
Honestly my image was of some Italian village posted yesterday on Lemmy that looked like it was made of stone. Or Isgiliath.
I do also remember houses with thatched roofs in England though, those don’t seem like they would survive a storm.
Those are historical buildings, this discussion was about new construction.
Historically people used to use what was locally available. Most of Italy has plenty of stones, that were also easily accessible, so regular people could build out of stone. But in other regions of Europe there were no stones lying about, so cheap houses were being build out of mud + straw, more expensive ones out of brick and much more expensive ones from imported stones.
Thatched roofs will survive storms without issue. The reason why they aren’t used anymore except by rich people is cost: very labor intensive to place and on top of that the thatching has to be replaced every x years. They made sense when labor was cheap and transporting heavy goods expensive.
Be skeptical:
Without adaptation strategies, the following conditions will likely incur substantial social and economic costs:
- Flooding of streets, homes, businesses, hospitals, schools, emergency shelters, etc.,
- Shoreline and beach erosion,
- Impacts to the operations of coastal drainage systems,
- Impairment of coastal water supplies and coastal water treatment facilities and infrastructure, and
- Shifts in habitats and reduced ecosystem services. source
Might be worth it to get a second climatologist opinion.
