Page 10 - Construction Standards News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Devastated south florida, obviously you all took notes, you made corrections, you beefed up the infrastructure. so what's changed since then? >> well, first of all, the construction standards since hurricane andrew are much greater, much stronger. all the new facilities, all the new buildings that have been built since andrew have a code that's bay higher which should be able to withstand all types of storms up to category 5. so that's a major, major improvement. on beach, we began raising roads, putting in pumps. i stress to our folks that what we've done is no much for a hurricane. people ha...

Devastating hurricane. and he's doing that in part because of its similar path. you had the south of florida that was just taken over by andrew in 1992. there's a lot of improvements to construction standards that have happened since then but do you think that florida's going to be ready for andrew-like storm this time? >> i think it's dangerous to compare any storm because the storms and their impacts are very different. this one's very different from andrew as well. it is expected to make a northward turn near the north shore of cuba later on and that timing is very critical. the models have...

Construction standards. so this is what we're really concerned about. you know i had an awful night last night in a strong hotel and still had my balcony door blown in and winds gusting through. i spend the night under the bathroom sink. but all that i could think about during that time of the people who might literally be clinging to a coconut tree for dear life trying to hold on in horrific winds. >> alice, talk about what the next few days will bring. what will it be like for crews to get out there and start assessing the damage and trying to get back to some sense of normalcy. >> reporter:...

Surge troops, we'll start pulling troops out in a year, and you go ahead and put in a part of afghanistan we're leaving, there is evidently cutting edge stadium seat not guilty this area, a secure perimeter, and it will never have a person in it. just because we're insecure about the taliban coming back, we're going to end up blowing it up before we leave. do you know what we could do with $34 million in the military? >> steve: absolutely. and so that's the juxtaposition. we're spending all this money on a building over in afghanistan that we knew three years ago we would never use, but we've ...

You can. >> what floor are you on in the building where you are right now? >> okay, i'm on a low floor, so the way should be quite low. i'm in what's considered a small apartment building. there's about -- there's four stories to it. i am on the first floor, so actually the second story, the first floor above the ground. and so the sway would have been a lot more three stories higher. it's -- because it's a smaller building and it was built in the '80s, it sort of squats -- it was built to very high construction standards. you don't rent an apartment in tokyo without knowing about the construc...