After living in this house for 15 years, I’ve finally decided I’ve been pushing my luck too far and have bit the bullet and started upgrading my hurricane defenses.

Of course, there is no defense a against a really bad storm. When Andrew came ashore south of Miami it dragged a flock of tornadoes in with it and hundreds of homes were totaled. Only steel reinforced concrete buildings have a chance against something like that, and they can still take a lot of damage. My house is sturdy, concrete cinder block, but not indestructible.

Our last direct hit, Wilma, carried away my gutters and drains and knocked out a window in my car, but there was no structural damage. Of course, she was a lightweight, barely hurricane strength (75 MPH winds), and was moving too fast to dump much rain. A big storm could have double that wind speed, and that’s not counting the twisters. And 12 inches of rain from a slow moving cyclone is not uneard of.

Fortunately, I don’t live in an area prone to storm surges, the coast here has no shallowing, narrowing bays, and I live 8 miles from the coast with a barrier island and the long barrow of I-95 between me and the Atlantic. All those seaside condos and hotels will make a great breakwater. According to the Quad Sheet, I live about 7 feet above high tide. I won’t get any salt water here.

But flooding from rain is still a possibility. The storm drains work well, and they lead straight to the canals, but the former can clog with debris, and the latter can back up if the sea rises too high and the pumps can’t keep up.

I’ve picked the crown of the pavement in front of my house as my benchmark, and I’ve never seen a thunderstorm or even Wilma succeed in covering that up completely. My house is an old one, and built up on a mound about 2 feet above that (they don’t do that any more, they park the slab right at ground level). I took Echo’s laser light toy and used it to measure how high I am above my surroundings. The water will have to be 24″ deep in the street before it comes in under my front door.

The house and roof have been painted and sealed, the porch retiled, and new gutters and downspouts installed, so the foundation should not get undermined or water driven in through the cracks.

As for the wind, I’ve removed all the big shrubs from around the house, and replaced my old fold-down storm shutters with the latest, up-to-code accordion hurricane shutters. The only weak point left is the garage door, and I’m going to place a removable, telescoping vertical hurricane strut inside the garage so the door has support in the center as well as the edges. Another trick is to roll the car in the garage up to the door so its weight will help keep the door from being pushed in by the wind.

Hurricane season officially starts June 1, but we rarely get any until about the middle of August.