Above the Flood

In the early morning hours of August 24, 1992, Hurricane Andrew struck south Florida with high winds and heavy rains. Andrew destroyed tens of thousands of homes and left 180,000 people homeless. The resulting property damage totaled over 30 billion dollars. The widespread destruction caused by Andrew was due primarily to high winds. However, flood waters contributed to the damage in low-lying coastal areas of central and southern Miami-Dade County. In the repair and reconstruction efforts that followed Hurricane Andrew, owners of damaged houses had opportunities to modify their houses to protect them from future flood damage. One effective method of protecting a house from flooding is elevating the habitable areas of the house above the flood level. Almost all single-family homes in Miami-Dade County are constructed with reinforced masonry block walls on a slab-on-grade foundation. Houses of this type are the most difficult to elevate for flood protection. This publication describes how homeowners in Miami-Dade County elevat¬ed their damaged slab-on-grade masonry houses following the devastating effects of Hurricane Andrew. Chapter 2 of this publication explains how the Federal Emergency Man¬agement Agency (FEMA) provided technical and regulatory guidance to Miami-Dade County homeowners concerning alternative house elevation techniques. Chapter 3 presents an overview of three common techniques appropriate for a variety of houses on different types of foundations. Chapter 4 uses eight illustrated case studies to demonstrate how Miami- Dade County homeowners used the three techniques to elevate their slab-on-grade houses. The benefits of elevating a floodprone house are summarized in Chapter 5.