Post Hurricane Michael Recovery, Resilience, and Mitigation

Hurricane Michael flooding and high-winds resulted in extensive damage to all types of buildings in the Florida panhandle. FEMA Building Science, in coordination with many partners, has developed two Recovery Advisories to assist a variety of interested stakeholders in rebuilding more resiliently by providing design and construction guidance to help minimize damage from future storm events. These newly released Recovery Advisories are currently available, among others developed from past natural disasters, from the FEMA Building Science Library.

Hurricane Michael Recovery Advisory 1 – Successfully Retrofitting Buildings for Wind Resistance

This Recovery Advisory provides examples of ineffective wind retrofits and guidance on an approach that can be taken to comprehensively evaluate vulnerabilities of buildings located in hurricane-prone regions for effectively applying key wind retrofits. The guidelines are applicable not only for buildings that have recently been damaged by wind, but also for buildings that have not experienced wind damage. These guidelines are intended to help building owners and operators, design professionals, contractors, and entities that fund retrofits, prevent or limit wind damage and water infiltration during high-wind events, and reflect lessons learned by the MAT after Hurricane Michael.

This Recovery Advisory focuses on critical facilities, but is also applicable to other types of buildings, both residential and non-residential. The primary audience is building owners and operators, design professionals, contractors, and entities that fund retrofits.

Hurricane Michael Recovery Advisory 2 – Best Practices for Minimizing Wind and Water Infiltration Damage

This Recovery Advisory provides important recommendations to reduce wind and water infiltration damage to new and existing residential buildings. The recommendations discussed are from existing FEMA Building Science resources, including recovery advisories published after Hurricane Irma, and also include new recommendations and best practices based on observations made by the FEMA MAT after Hurricane Michael.

The primary audience includes building owners, operators, and managers; design professionals; building officials; contractors; and municipal building, and planning officials.

Upcoming webinars will be provided to introduce these FEMA MAT Hurricane Michael Recovery Advisories and communicate key material from them to the audience. Additional detailed information on registration, dates and times, once available, will be distributed to all recipients of this email.

To learn more about FEMA’s Mitigation Assessment Team Program, click here.

To learn more about FEMA’s Building Science Branch, visit our website.

Contact the Building Science helpline at FEMA-BuildingScienceHelp@fema.dhs.gov or 866-927-2104.