Florida county puts damage from Hurricane Nicole at $481 million – “The structural damage along our coastline is unprecedented”

DAYTONA BEACH SHORES, Florida, 14 November 2022 (AP) – Damages are estimated at more than $481 million in a central Florida coastal county where homes collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean following Hurricane Nicole last week.

The damages from the category 1 storm in Volusia County, home to Daytona Beach, exceeded those from the much stronger Hurricane Ian, which caused $377 million in the county, officials said. Hurricane Ian, a category 4 storm, made landfall in southwest Florida in late September and tore across the state.

Moody’s Investors Service estimated insured losses from Ian at between $40 billion and $70 billion in Florida and North Carolina. There were 137 deaths attributed to Ian, a state medical examiners board reported Monday.

Severe beach erosion from Ian made homes vulnerable to the impact of Nicole in Wilbur-by-the Sea, a quaint beach community where single-family homes fell into the ocean last week. Volusia County officials said that at least 30 single-family homes in Wilbur-by-the-Sea and seven single-family homes in nearby Ponce Inlet have been deemed unsafe following Hurricane Nicole.

In Daytona Beach Shores and New Smyrna Beach, two dozen multistory condo buildings have been evacuated and deemed unsafe by building inspectors.

Daytona Beach Shore by far had the most property damage in the county, estimated at $370.3 million, according to the Volusia County Property Appraiser. It was followed by New Smyrna Beach at $51.1 million and Daytona Beach at $50 million.

The property appraiser’s office warned that those figures would likely rise as more buildings are inspected.

For storm-weary Floridians, Nicole was the first November hurricane to hit their shores since 1985 and only the third since record-keeping began in 1853.

The storm was blamed for five deaths in Florida. A man and a woman were killed by electrocution when they touched downed power lines in the Orlando area. Also in Orange County, one man died in a vehicle crash, and a male pedestrian was struck and killed by a vehicle because of poor road conditions. Another man died as waves battered his yacht against a dock in Cocoa, despite efforts to resuscitate him by paramedics who managed to get on board as the boat broke away from its moorings.

Florida county puts damage from Nicole at $481 million

Nicole leaves ‘unprecedented’ building damage along part of Florida coast

By Brendan O’Brien in Chicago, Rich McKay in Atlanta and Jonathan Allen in New York; editing by Donna Bryson, Jonathan Oatis and Aurora Ellis
11 November 2022

ATLANTA (Reuters) – The soaking remains of Hurricane Nicole brought heavy rains to Georgia and the Carolinas on Friday after it left a trail of destroyed and teetering beachside homes and damaged hotels and condos along Florida’s Atlantic coast and killed at least four people.

In Volusia County, local officials evacuated 24 beachside hotels and condos after the structures were deemed unsafe late on Thursday, hours after the storm slammed ashore as a Category 1 hurricane.

In Wilbur-by-the-Sea, an upscale beachfront community just south of Daytona Beach, about a half-dozen homes crumbled into the sea while another 25 single-family homes were declared structurally unsafe and evacuated, officials said.

“The structural damage along our coastline is unprecedented,” Volusia County Manager George Recktenwald said in a statement. “This is going to be a long road to recovery.”

The beaches in the community of about 30,000 people were littered with piles of concrete, wood and rebar, the remnants of large homes with picturesque views of the ocean. Residents surveyed the ruins in disbelief.

Two people were electrocuted in the storm’s aftermath in Orange County and two other people died in a car crash on the Florida Turnpike during the storm, the Orlando Sentinel reported, citing the state Highway Patrol.

In Wilbur-by-the-Sea, most of two vacation homes that Krista Goodrich manages collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean.

“I opened the front door, and the rest of the house is just gone into the sea,” said Goodrich, 44, adding that it was like the “hand of God” took the home. She said she cried for a half-hour before calling the owners of that house.

“It’s very emotional, the owners are my friends,” Goodrich said. “I stood there and watched the waves pummeling what was left.”

She said that Hurricane Ian, which hit in September, took down a seawall and 30 feet (9 meters) of that home’s backyard. “Nicole took the rest and the house.”

Engineers said many of the damaged or destroyed buildings dated to the 1950s, decades before more stringent hurricane-proofing building codes took effect. They added that shallow foundations and relatively low seawalls were no match for a storm surge that coincided with high tide.

“If you built your house or hotel 50 years ago, there’s no way to make the owners retrofit them,” said Sinisa Kolar, a Miami-based structural engineer with the Falcon Group.

Louis Vigliotti, the owner of LAV Engineering in Volusia County’s Ormond Beach, spent the morning surveying damaged coastal properties.

“There’s a lot of improper designs that have done OK over the years, but they finally met their match,” he said. […]

Nicole’s storm surge also caused the collapse of parts of the scenic A1A highway, which runs along the Atlantic coast in Volusia County, officials said. […]

Nicole is unusual in how late in the season it has arrived; it is only the second hurricane to ever make landfall in the continental United States after Nov. 4. Hurricane Kate came ashore near Mexico Beach, Florida, on 21 November 1985. The Atlantic hurricane season officially runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

Volusia County was among several East Coast areas hard hit six weeks ago by Hurricane Ian, a catastrophic Category 4 storm that initially struck Florida’s Gulf Coast, then swept across the state to the Atlantic, causing some $60 billion in damage and killing more than 140 people.

Peter Petrovsky, a Los Angeles-based structural engineer and building code expert who has worked on beachfront properties across the nation, said people affected by Nicole, especially wealthier residents, would be tempted to rebuild on the beachfront.

“But that doesn’t mean it’s smart,” he said. “The ocean always wins.”

Nicole leaves ‘unprecedented’ building damage along part of Florida coast