Page 90 - Building Codes News Today

She made landfall overnight as dangerous category 5. thats the highest. with its sights set on the u.s. virgin islands and puerto rico. jose is making its way north, threatening to bring heavy rain and strong winds along the northeast coast starting today. we have a great team of reporters across the atlantic covering these two major storms. i want to start in san juan, puerto rico, where nbcs tammy litner is standing by. cities like san juan do have strong building codes. they have earthquakes....

Building standards are strong for mexico, especially in this region. but there are a number of homes in poorer neighborhoods where theyre not up to building codes and apparently some very widespread damage. the best news is we dont have any reports of serious injuries, which in some ways belies the pictures weve seen as we have seen large buildings collapse on to themselves pancaking in the city streets. those are just the ones where we have video. this is one of the locations where theres been ...

Traveling very close to san juan. some things that could happen. the eye is only 12 miles in diameter. its a small eye. not the entire island is going to get category 5 devastation. only where the eye travels. if we get to the east side it would be worse in st. thomas but we could get it offshore. thats the hope. if it goes to the south, it would spare san juan but still hit other cities. no one will win. we would like to avoid the 1 million plus people from going through a category 4, 5 hurrica...

Across mexico city were holding preparation drills on the anniversary of that quake. that quake killed 9,500 people. obviously, building codes were shored up after that. but, again, a 7.1 is a pretty big and powerful earthquake. speaking as somebody who has lived through earthquakes in los angeles, when you get to 7.0 on the richter scale you are feeling quite a lot of shaking and it is not an enjoyable experience. it is pretty scary. obviously our thoughts are with mexico right now. we are goin...

Different. >> reporter: why? how so? well, i didnt have a lot of this stuff here before. thats not mine. >> reporter: the eye went right over your house. isnt it amazing its still standing? >> yeah, im ecstatic. they changed our building codes about five years ago, and i think it made all the difference. >> reporter: so we are told that there were 130 miles an hour sustained winds over kudlow key with gusts going about 160 to 180 miles an hour here which explains why there was so much damage. th...

The keys ready to help and what weve been seeing our c-5s nc-17 s taking up with food, water and cots. today we wrote on a helicopter with a u.s. navy, over 110-mile stretch of violence known as the florida keys and from the sky it doesnt look nearly as bad as it is in person. if there still structures that, the keys have some of the more strict building codes in the country. when you get down, he realized that people dont have water, power, cell phone service, gas. it is already making an isola...

Houses are totally destroyed. this is your boat here? >> this one. its a little beat up. survived. >> reporter: what do you think? >> not horrible. i still have a house. i have my boat. underneath of my house looks different. >> reporter: how so? >> well, i didnt have all of this stuff here before. a lot of this isnt mine. thats not main. the tackle box isnt mine. this will be the tell tale. watch. its dry so far. >> reporter: the eye went right over your house. >> right over our house. >> repor...

They have to build the buildings back with new building codes. all that takes time. so the adrenaline rush, reality is going to set in. and the sad things is 40% of small businesses fail after a disaster like this unfortunately, anderson. they dont have insurance, nor can they sustain their customers or employees to keep the business going. we might have to find a different way to do recovery because the way we do it now is not as efficient as it could be to bring communities and businesses back...

You look dumb. >> juan: it looked like he was trying to force an argument. >> dana: he wanted to -- what was your question? >> juan: i was going to say to you, though, to be respectful of jim acosta the scientists say you have warmer waters, that makes for more intense hurricanes. is there -- can you fairly as a reporter say there is a correlation between the hurricane and climate change? >> dana: i know last week greg spent time going through all the data so we dont have to. what greg said is a...

After andrew, there were new building codes in much of florida, but does there have to be a focus on reconstruction and where residential areas can build? >> i think we know a lot more now post-katrina in 2005. people thought that was just because we were below sea level. now you saw houston. you saw sandy really hurt the northeast and now you see florida devastated. these storms are going to continue to come our way. we have to build more solid, we have to build better. as you can see, each one...