When Hurricane Michael tore through the Florida Panhandle in 2018, a beach house called the Sand Palace was left standing, while more than half the buildings around it were destroyed.
Its owners had built it to withstand roughly double the wind speed that Florida’s code required, with reinforced concrete walls on 40-foot (12-meter) pilings. The cost was about 15% to 20% more than standard construction, but the owners wanted a house that could survive storms.
