MEXICO BEACH, Fla. — “All these townhouses here, they were just wiped out, just gone," said Russell King, looking down from the balcony of his beachfront vacation home in Mexico Beach. "There were like 40 on each side. Poof, they were gone. In like ten minutes they were carried away."
King's house is now surrounded by concrete slabs where homes stood this time last year. He and his nephew, who built the house with him, had just gotten the green light to move in six months before Hurricane Michael brought 160-mile-per-hour winds and a 17.5-foot storm surge to the laidback coastal town.
“In the beginning, I told the engineers I wanted a hurricane house," King said. "Not one the hurricane would take down but that would survive."
What allowed his house to survive?
“It’s a hundred things,” said King pointing to hurricane windows that, while cracked on the outside, never broke on the inside keeping the wind out. “Because these windows survived this house survive.”
From hurricane windows to concrete walls and even drains in the floors, this house was built above code with every decision focused on what would give it the best chance of surviving a big storm.
“Water came in and water drained out,” King said.
He credits hurricane clips with helping hold the house together.
“Everywhere two boards come together put a clip, everywhere,” King said. “I know a full hip roof works. I know it now because I’ve seen it proven one hundred times. You should only have a hip roof."
While his home did suffer some damage, he is now working to reinforce it based on lessons he learned from Hurricane Michael.
“We used to have a fan there," he said. "We will never have another fan there ever again. They are nice, but the wind gets in there and tears up the fan. It gets a hole in there and it pulls down the ceiling down."
He offers this advice for anyone building a home in a hurricane-prone area.
“You better get a team together, an engineer, a builder, architect, designer you better put it together and then you will have to give up some things you want to increase your chances to survive," he said.