Hurricane Michael leaves path of destruction in Florida counties with older housing, mobile homes

Hurricane Michael plowed a path Wednesday through parts of Florida’s Panhandle that include greater concentrations of older houses and mobile homes than the rest of the state, raising prospects that damage in the historic storm’s wake could be extensive.

More than 145,000 homes in Michael’s path, or about three-fourths of all residences in the nine Panhandle counties hit hardest, were built before 2000, which was before Florida unveiled some of the nation’s toughest building codes, according to U.S. Census Bureau housing data.

“Your older structures, prior to 2002, are not going to fare as well as the structures that were built since the Florida building codes went into effect," said Jeremy Stewart, past president of the Florida Home Builders Association and owner of an Okaloosa County construction firm.

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More than 30,000 residences, or about 22 percent of all occupied dwellings, are mobile homes, which can be particularly vulnerable to major storms, according to the Census Bureau data. In Liberty County, nearly 45 percent of the occupied residences in Michael's path were mobile homes.

Michael made landfall Wednesday afternoon as a powerful Category 4 hurricane near Mexico Beach, east of Panama City, packing 150 mph winds. It was the strongest storm ever recorded to hit the Florida Panhandle.

The nine counties most impacted are among the state's least populated. The 385,263 people who live in the counties make up less than 2 percent of Florida's population, according to Census Bureau estimates. Most of those people, or 183,563, live in Bay County, which includes Panama City.

Florida began improving its building codes after Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm, ripped through South Florida in August 1992. The devastation triggered a statewide, mandatory building code 10 years later considered among the nation’s strongest.

But most homes built before the updated codes went into effect were never required to upgrade.

“There was no real measure of accountability,” Stewart said of the building practices before Andrew.

In the nine counties between Bay County to the west and Franklin County to the east where Michael’s winds were strongest, 145,435 homes were built before 2000, according to Census Bureau housing estimates from 2016. That’s about 75 percent of the estimated 191,356 homes in those nine counties.

That’s also in line with the state as a whole, where about 75 percent of the housing stock was built before 2000. But four of the counties in Michael’s path have a higher percentage of older homes: Calhoun, 77 percent; Gadsden, 79 percent; Jackson, 85 percent; and Washington, 81 percent.

“Homes built before those codes were put into place … probably were not built as strong as homes built since,” said Susan Millerick, a spokeswoman for the Tampa-based Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety.

About 8 percent of Florida’s occupied housing stock are mobile homes, but it’s more than double that, or 22 percent, for counties in Michael’s path.

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The highest percentage of mobile homes is in Liberty County, where nearly 45 percent of the estimated 2,363 occupied residences are mobile homes that are often more vulnerable to strong winds because most are not anchored for long-term use. 

Each of the nine counties in Michael's path had a higher percentage of mobile homes than the state average: Bay, 14 percent; Calhoun, 38 percent; Franklin, 25 percent; Gadsden, 27 percent; Gulf, 18 percent; Jackson, 29 percent; Wakulla, 32 percent; and Washington, 39 percent. 

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Mobile homes in coastal areas are required to be manufactured to withstand hurricane-force winds, Millerick said. If they are, and if they are anchored and installed correctly, they can be safe.

“You can’t make a blanket assumption that because it’s a mobile home or a modular home, it’s therefore not going to survive the storm,” she said.

Follow Ryan Mills on Twitter: @NDN_RMills