Hurricanes: Their Nature and Impacts on Society - Climate Science ...

HURRICANE ANDREW: FORECAST, IMPACT, RESPONSE
POLITICS OF THE BUILDING CODE
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Figure 7.4 Relationships between various participants in the South Florida Building
Code Decision process. A Miami Herald analysis found a conflict of interest. Based on
Getter (1992b)
inspected them" (Figure 7.4). At the height of the building boom, the building
industry contributed "one of every three dollars" to campaigns for the Metro
Commission that oversees <strong>and</strong> interprets the South Florida Building Code
(Leen et al. 1992). The Metro Commission appoints the members of the Board
of Rules <strong>and</strong> Appeals, which has responsibility for determining the suitability
of new construction materials. In the years leading to Andrew, most of the
Board's members came from the building industry (Getter 1 992c).
The findings of the Herald's investigation can be summarized in terms of
complacency, accountability, <strong>and</strong> communication.
Complacency Complacency is reflected in the lack of attention paid by
building inspectors <strong>and</strong> government officials to actual inspections. For
instance, in 1988 Dade County employed 16 building inspectors to serve a
population of well over one million. On many occasions in the years preceding
Andrew, inspectors reported conducting more than 70 inspections per day, a
rate of one every six minutes, not counting driving time (Getter 1993). Some
did not even leave their cars to conduct inspections. One hurricane expert,
Peter Black, aptly summed up the results of poor construction that went
undetected: "The damage is directly proportional to the kind of construction
used" (quoted in Leen et al. 1992). It is likely that complacency was a
consequence of several decades of low hurricane incidence in south Florida.
As one veteran engineer commented, part of the problem was that "people