Climate change is increasing billion-dollar disasters, many of them from intensifying hurricanes
This combination of photos devastation following Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla., on Oct. 12, 2018, with Bonny Paulson’s home, top left, and the same location on May 3, 2019. Climate change is increasing billion-dollar disasters, many of them from intensifying hurricanes. Some developers are building homes like Paulson’s with an eye toward making them more resilient to the extreme weather that’s increasing with climate change, and friendlier to the environment at the same time. (AP Photo, File)
FILE – This combination of photos devastation following Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla., on Oct. 12, 2018, with Bonny Paulson’s home, top left, and the same location on May 3, 2019. Climate change is increasing billion-dollar disasters, many of them from intensifying hurricanes. Some developers are building homes like Paulson’s with an eye toward making them more resilient to the extreme weather that’s increasing with climate change, and friendlier to the environment at the same time. (AP Photo, File)
FILE – This combination of photos devastation following Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla., on Oct. 12, 2018, with Bonny Paulson’s home, top left, and the same location on May 3, 2019. Climate change is increasing billion-dollar disasters, many of them from intensifying hurricanes. Some developers are building homes like Paulson’s with an eye toward making them more resilient to the extreme weather that’s increasing with climate change, and friendlier to the environment at the same time. (AP Photo, File)
FILE – This combination of photos devastation following Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla., on Oct. 12, 2018, with Bonny Paulson’s home, top left, and the same location on May 3, 2019. Climate change is increasing billion-dollar disasters, many of them from intensifying hurricanes. Some developers are building homes like Paulson’s with an eye toward making them more resilient to the extreme weather that’s increasing with climate change, and friendlier to the environment at the same time. (AP Photo, File)
When Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle five years ago, it left boats, cars and trucks piled up to the windows of Bonny Paulson’s home in the tiny coastal community of Mexico Beach, Florida, even though the house rests on pillars 14 feet above the ground. But Paulson’s home, with a rounded shape that looks something like a ship, shrugged off Category 5 winds that might otherwise have collapsed it.
“I wasn’t nervous at all,” Paulson said, recalling the warning to evacuate. Her house lost only a few shingles, with photos taken after the storm showing it standing whole amid the wreckage of almost all the surrounding homes.
Some developers are building homes like Paulson’s with an eye toward making them more resilient to the extreme weather that’s increasing with climate change, and friendlier to the environment at the same time.
