Yeah, prepare. But I want to prepare for much longer term than most.

We don't even have basements down here. And I live in a wood frame home. That's stupid. Houses should be built to withstand category 4 winds for hours. This could be (and should be) a non event. Florida needs to evolve to handle hurricanes like northern states handle snow storms. If my house was guaranteed to survive, all I'd do is make sure I had enough supplies to last a week or so, then go inside and lock the door. My anxiety comes from not knowing if the house will still be here next week.

I wonder how much it'd cost to build a house out of concrete? Is it at all comparable to wood frame / cinder block? I'm getting out of this wood stick house and into something else. Probably cinder block. But I'd wouldn't mind having a house built if I thought it would make a real difference in survivability.

Edit:
While I'm ranting... <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

If we really are going to be seeing more hurricanes, let's stop running power lines above ground, mounting stop lights on cables strung across the street, outlaw advertising signs that put huge sail area 10s of feet above ground, cut back / down all trees anywhere near a structure, forbid tar shingles, require real hurricane shutters, make building the right kind of house easy and the wrong kind (wood frame) darn near impossible.

This is an engineering problem. Hurricanes can be survived. A direct hit doesn't have to mean total infrastructure collapse. Will it be expensive? Oh, yeah. But the cost to fix the damage is already well into the billions. Borrowing from software engineering, why is there never time to do it right but there's always time to do it over?

*sigh*

Ok. I feel better now. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />