Name: How This Florida Town Survived Hurricanes Irma, Ian, Helene, and Milton
Uploaded: 2025-06-27T04:01:00Z
Duration: 7 min 16 s
Description: At Babcock Ranch, the roads are designed to flood during a hurricane. The town’s engineer explains how this and other hidden tactics keep the town safe even during a hundred-year storm.

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At Babcock Ranch, the roads are designed to flood during a hurricane. The town’s engineer explains how this and other hidden tactics keep the town safe even during a hundred-year storm. Photo Illustration: MacKenzie Coffman

https://m.wsj.net/video/20250707/1e02f3c8-573b-456f-8e26-60b35539b549/2/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

At Babcock Ranch, the roads are designed to flood during a hurricane. The town’s engineer explains how this and other hidden tactics keep the town safe even during a hundred-year storm.

How This Florida Town Survived Hurricanes Irma, Ian, Helene, and Milton

Narrator: Of the 15 most damaging hurricanes in US history, only two were category five.

Hurricane categories are based on wind speeds and only wind speeds.

Narrator: But what often creates the most damage is water.

Amy: Given all of the new codes, most homes can really survive category five winds, however, they can also float away fully intact.

Narrator: Yet, this one town, Babcock Ranch, has been hit by four hurricanes and basically came out unscathed.

There was no flooding at all.

Narrator: So, we asked the engineer who helped build this town to break down its hidden designs. Here's Babcock Ranch from above with Fort Myers and Cape Coral nearby. For a lot of the surrounding areas...

Everything is developed very grid-like, which is traditional because it utilizes the land the best.

Narrator: But this type of development doesn't always consider how nearby wetlands expand and absorb excess flood water.

Amy: You do have a waterway that flows right through here. These areas that used to act as a sponge are, kind of, all taken up by development and so these areas are very prone to flooding.

Narrator: Babcock Ranch took a different approach. These photos show part of the ranch before and after it was developed. All the dark patches are wetlands and you can see how the ranch was built around them, leaving some areas where they'll flood and connect untouched.

It was very important to us to utilize the existing water systems.

Narrator: But it didn't just leave these systems intact, Babcock Ranch also mimicked them. To do this, they turned the ponds and lakes into a network of bowls.

So the way the entire system is designed is each of these lakes acts like a very bottom of a bowl and the rest of the system is built up around the edges of the bowl and it sits a little bit higher, so you have the houses at the highest point, and the houses, the water falls off of it, and it goes down into the bowl.

Narrator: Each bowl is connected through a series of pipes underground, that way if one lake fills up, it won't spill over, it'll just drain to a different bowl with more capacity. Then if there's a blockage, all these extra pipes help ensure the water keeps flowing and Babcock system lets them control the water levels, allowing them to drain the bowls before hurricanes to accommodate the extra water, which is eventually discharged down to the river.

There is a ditch that runs right through the middle of the property and all the way out to the river here. Traditional design would say to move the water through that ditch as fast as possible. What we've done at Babcock is we've allowed that water to come out to the fringes of the development and fill in this entire area.

Narrator: Slowing the water down lets the wetlands absorb some of the water, preventing an onslaught of storm water from inundating the river and surrounding areas. The next key to managing hurricane flooding is elevation. Babcock Ranch's natural elevation ranged from 12 to 38 feet.

So, generally anything that falls within the development footprint overall was elevated.

Narrator: But certain areas of the town were elevated higher than others, directing water towards specific collection points.

Amy: The smaller roads were elevated by about three and a half feet, the larger roads were elevated by approximately four and a half feet, and then any of the homes were elevated by about five feet.

Narrator: Now, the majority of the community is at or above 30 feet. In a hundred year storm event, the ranch would face about 14 inches of rainfall and the water levels would rise by about four feet, and all of the homes on Babcock would be one foot above the water level, it's grocery store and some offices, two feet above it.

So if things were to be catastrophic, we want to be able to bounce back as quick as possible, so being able to go get your groceries, being able to go to work, those types of things need to be the first accessible places.

Narrator: But while all the buildings would be safe, the roads would be completely flooded by design.

At a certain point, they're going to go underwater 'cause they were what was built the lowest. We can intentionally use those roads to help direct the flow, to allow the water to connect between the lake and the roads away from the homes and the structures.

Narrator: But much of the ranch's success also lies in its location. It's about 20 miles inland from Florida's west coast and that distance alone is enough to mostly protect it from the deadliest force in a hurricane, storm surge. As hurricanes move inland, they push a huge volume of water ashore at high speeds and with immense force.

Amy: It's going to pull the water from the Gulf and push it all the way inland this way.

Narrator: Take Hurricane Helene.

Amy: Hurricane Helene, kind of, took the path here and made landfall around the Keaton Beach/Steinhatchee area, where 80% of the buildings were completely destroyed from storm surge being 12 to 16 feet overall.

Narrator: But as a storm moves inland...

Amy: So a nine foot storm surge on the beach, for example, would get up to the rafters in the house. What you'll see is a nine foot storm surge here is only a three foot storm surge here.

Narrator: Florida's coastline is lined with mangroves that act as a natural buffer, slowing down the storm surge and trapping debris.

Anything that's creating friction for that water is going to also help slow that water down.

Narrator: But far away from the dangers of the coast, rainfall still poses a significant threat. About 25% of hurricane deaths in the US occurred in inland counties.

As we've seen more and more storms that are exceeding a hundred year events, across the United States, it appears more and more likely that designing to a hundred year storm event is not going to be enough to keep a home from flooding over the course of its built life.

Narrator: There's a 1% chance every year that a 100-year storm event will happen and since Amy started working on this project.

We've seen three 100-year storm events.

Narrator: Hurricanes have cumulatively caused over 7,000 deaths and cost $1.5 trillion in damages since 1980, and Florida is one of the most vulnerable places in the country. So, while the current laws mandate many homes be built to withstand a hundred year event, some developers are building beyond the requirement, just look at Hunter's Point, a new coastal development. It was required to build at an elevation of 10 feet above the flood zone but instead, it was built 16 feet above it. So during Hurricane Helene, the streets flooded but the homes remained dry. Each one that sold has gone for upwards of a million dollars.

Amy: There is a larger push from people who have experienced flooding situations to purchase those types of homes. I think, ultimately, we can prevent the amount of destruction that we've been seeing with hurricanes. People are going to want to move to Florida no matter what, we're prepared to be more resilient and move on quicker, and that's a big part of making sure that we're developing responsibly if we are going to develop an area that is subject to such extreme events.