THE RIGHT PROGRAM AT
THE RIGHT TIME
Since its creation in 2000, the Insurance
Institute for Business & Home Safety’s
FORTIFIED for Safer Living® program has
provided builders and residents with an
opportunity to create stronger, more resilient homes in the face of natural and
man-made disasters. The program’s engineering-based, code-plus standards
for new construction have been embraced by homeowners and builders in
high-risk areas around the country. As
the human and financial costs associated with severe weather events have
continued to mount during the past
decade, attention has focused on how
those losses can be reduced.
“Most communities do not have the option of moving out of Mother Nature’s
way” said Fred Malik, IBHS FORTIFIED
program manager. “As a result, the clear
option for most communities is to make
themselves more resilient in the face of
disasters. The question is how this can
be accomplished in an effective, affordable way. The answer is to build, retrofit, renovate and repair buildings using FORTIFIED construction standards,”
Malik stated.
More than 200 homes have received
the FORTIFIED for Safer Living® designation. It is a challenge, however, for a
home to meet all standards for every
hazard as required by the FORTIFIED
for Safer Living® program. Given these
steep requirements, coupled with the
downturn in the economy and housing market in 2008, IBHS developed a
new program based on a single hazard
– FORTIFIED Home™ — Hurricane.
“This program quickly exceeded the
number of homes designated under
the original program, but its growth
was impeded because almost every
element was handled manually. With
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Disaster Safety Review | 2013
public policymakers, builders, contractors, and homeowners all seeking help
in creating safer, stronger homes, IBHS
made significant investments to scale
up the FORTIFIED Home™ — Hurricane
program as the first of several single
hazard programs. Specifically, IBHS has
invested in new technology partnering with top companies in their fields
to improve and streamline the designation process, as well as augment the
training capabilities of the program,”
Malik explained.
The FORTIFIED Home™—Hurricane
program – available for both new
construction and retrofitting existing homes – includes three levels of
designation: bronze, silver and gold.
Homeowners can work with builders
and contractors to decide which level
best suits their budget and resilience
requirements. The new web-based
platform offers individualized portals
for homeowners, evaluators and administrators; a simple, seamless online designation process; and availability from any mobile device. IBHS
is completing the final testing of the
new evaluation platform and we’ve
started training evaluators through the
updated FORTIFIED Home Evaluator
Certification course.
“By scaling up the FORTIFIED Home™ —
Hurricane program and making it available to more homeowners, communities will be stronger and more resilient
against the devastating power of hurricanes and tropical storms. More lives
will be saved, property damage will be
reduced, and the amount of government disaster aid needed following a
catastrophic event will be decreased,”
said Malik.
Some coastal states, such as Alabama,
Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina,
have recognized these benefits and others of FORTIFIED homes. Each of them
has implemented different programs to
provide insurance and other financial
incentives to lower the cost of a home’s
property insurance wind premium and
retrofitting expenses if IBHS’ FORTIFIED
Home™ building standards are used.
The new, streamlined version of the
FORTIFIED Home™ — Hurricane program will be launched publicly in
January 2014.
For more information about IBHS’
FORTIFED programs, visit www.
DisasterSafety.org/FORTIFIED.