Citizens of coastal areas live with this potential every hurricane season.
Evacuation can prevent loss of life, but preventing loss of property is more challenging.
Buildings on piles may have unique coastal charm, but homeowners may want to enclose that ground-level space. Because strong walls absorb the surging water, which could jeopardize the whole building's foundation during a storm, homeowners have been encouraged to use walls that would break away without compromising the structural integrity of the foundation. These experiments were done with wood breakaway walls, but researchers would like to try using unreinforced, hollow-cell masonry walls in similar experiments. Hollow cinder blocks would have the advantage of not becoming large, floating debris after a hurricane, making cleanup easier and reducing the danger to other buildings. Testing masonry blocks is more difficult than testing wood because of long cure times for the mortar and potential for damage to the wave machine.