Page 7 - Spilings News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> when i first drove into town -- >> go ahead. >> i'm sorry. when i first drove into town, i had been relieved because i had already seen the pictures of the house and the fact that the house stood. i had already seen the pictures of destruction, but there was nothing like it firsthand. before i made it to the house, i already had fears for the community. >> it is so hard to look at the community now and think of everything that was lost. why did your house -- >> we were with our friends yesterday. >> why did your house survive? >> go ahead. >> we put a lot of work in it. we paid attention to...

We are at a point now where we started running on hope of finding survivors. still people want to provide answers as far as what or who made it through the storm. i country the other activity and give a couple of residents, mike and eric jackson. they are underneath where the house used to be. they are standing amongst the pilings here, the stilts they used to hold up the house. it is now entirely gone and they are recovering what they can get their hands on. the one thing the city officials want people to do is frankly, not what they are doing. it is hard to keep them away but they want to ke...

That there's a couple city blocks there where buildings used to be, homes used to be. then you take a look at some of the newest construction that's on the beach itself. on pilings, on pillars, and those oceanfront homes are still there. but behind those oceanfront homes were all single-story ranch type buildings. where we hope no one seeking shelter during this onslaught of the water that came through here. this was surge. this was wind. this was equal to about a 30-minute ef-2 tornado being right over this entire area. 150 miles is an equivalent of a strong ef-2 or ef-3 tornado. if you're in...

Built to withstand 120 mile an hour winds. what nobody can really ultimately stop, however, is when the storm surge comes from the gulf of mexico. that wall of water at 12 foot comes in and just pushes straight through. first of all, the force is incredible. so some of the things they have tried to build here are walls that would actually give way when the water came through but keep the structure itself in place so the pilings that go into the sand deep here will hold the structures in place. there are some that are relatively old. and of course there's some construction here including some c...

Waves are approaching people's properties. you can see some stairs there that people built to get out to the beach, they're getting hit with some of the waves. if you look on this pier, i am told by some local residents that live here, one of the local residents that lives here, those pilings at the end are where low tide would be, and high tide comes up halfway through this. it's almost completely underwater, especially when waves come up. you can see how high this foam is coming up into this person's yard. thankfully, not quite at their house just yet. i'm going to try to make my way down he...