On 2005-08-30, Dan Luke wrote:

"Dylan Smith" wrote:
ALL WOOD
FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED.

Bull****.

Not at all. If the hurricane had remained a category 5 storm,
overpressures of 4-5 psi could be expected. This is sufficient to
destroy
a timber frame building. It's about equivalent to the blast that would
be felt about 2.5 miles from a 100kt nuclear explosion.

Well, it says, "ALL." Hurricane damage simply doesn't work that way.
It is freakishly spotty even in a very bad storm.

In a city below sea level? Imagine if it had hit as a Category 5 storm
with a central pressure of 902mb - it's not just the wind, it's the deep
floodwaters being driven by these savage winds too. The floodwaters will
easily see off any building that the winds didn't. Even if a flooded
timber frame building manages to survive being lashed by Category 5
winds and 18 feet of flood water, when the water recedes (weeks later!)
it'll have to be pulled down anyway. A building that is so badly damaged
that it needs to be demolished is effectively destroyed.

If it takes as long as some of the doomsayers are saying to drain the
flooded parts of the city, I suspect most of the houses currently
flooded to roof level aren't going to be structurally sound.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"