• the building to be strongly con- 

 nected from the top of the roof to 

 the bottom of the pilings. 



It would be 18 years before the 

 guidelines would become mandatory. 

 But homeowners and builders began 

 to comply. They mounted their houses 

 on pilings, sunk the pilings deep into 

 the sand and tied roofs to walls and 

 walls to foundations. 



"The image of the typical beach 

 house changed, " says Spencer Rogers, 

 Sea Grant's coastal engineering 

 specialist. 



"People wanted to buy beach houses 

 elevated on pilings with underhouse 

 parking because that was their idea of 

 what a beach house looked like on the 

 North Carolina coast. They probably 

 didn't connect that image with hurri- 

 canes. But at least they were making 

 the right choice." 



North Carolina building codes were 

 years ahead of the rest of the nation, 

 Rogers says. It was the mid-1970s 

 before the Federal Flood Insurance 

 Program coerced coastal localities 

 nationwide into tougher building re- 

 quirements. 



But Rogers saw ways that the North 

 Carolina code could become even bet- 



Continued on next page 



The 



Carolina 

 Code 



A better foundation 

 for constntction 

 in coastal North 

 Carolina. 



By Kathy Hart 



A hurricane named Hazel slammed 

 120 mph winds and a 15-foot wall of 

 water against North Carolina's south- 

 ern beaches Oct. 15, 1954. 



On Long Beach, only five of 357 

 buildings were left standing. 



Five other hurricanes followed in 

 the next six years. Each took its toll on 

 coastal homes, and each delivered a 

 lesson. 



Coastal structures weren't built to 

 withstand the fury of hurricanes. Even 

 strong northeasters posed a threat. 



After Hurricane Donna in 1960 and 

 the Ash Wednesday northeaster in 

 1962, the N.C. Building Code Council 

 realized that a different set of stan- 

 dards was needed for coastal construc- 

 tion. 



Six years later, North Carolina be- 

 came one of the first states in the nation 

 to set up guidelines for coastal residen- 

 tial construction. The guidelines were 

 optional and applied only to homes 

 built on the Outer Banks or east of the 

 Intracoastal Waterway. 



They called for: 



• pilings to be sunk 8 feet in the 

 ground, 



• the floor foundation to be 2 feet 

 above the site's highest recorded 

 storm surge, and 



