Story thread · 17 reports / 16 sources

Florida shows how to adapt as coastal cities face growing threats from sea level rise and storms

nbcmiami.com · 4h · first reportShare

One day there was a roof. The next morning it was gone. Jeffrey Huber still remembers the day some 34 years ago when Hurricane Andrew blew off the roof of his childhood home, one of tens of thousands damaged and destroyed across southern Florida. For days, first responders couldn’t get to them. For a month and a half, they relied on food donations. For more than a year, he lived with his family in a trailer. “It wasn’t just about the storm itself, but it was about the aftermath of that storm and how we begin to design for those aspects,” said Huber, a landscape architect and professor who was 12 in 1992 when the Category 5 hurricane hit. “We are seeing extreme storms, extreme scenarios like this that are becoming much more common.” Some 129 million people — nearly 40% of the U.S. population — live in coastal counties. Recent research shows that a rise in sea level driven by humans has increased the frequency of extreme coastal flooding around the world. As climate change threatens comm