Its nice to see folks accepting the reality of the environment they chose and adapting to deal with it. The same thing has happened in the Florida Keys over the years assisted by building codes that require that the first floor of structures contain no furnished living space that are open to allow flood waters (or in their case, the storm surge) to flow around and under the structure which hopefully survives. This has no doubt saved untold millions of dollars in damages. Unfortunately, not all residents believe in the building code and have secretly built in this buffer space to rent out to tourists. I suspect they do so at the peril of having their insurance company deny any claims.