E – 1575 Retrofitting Homes for Wind Protection

Hurricane Katrina damaged or destroyed 234,230 single-family homes in Mississippi alone (FEMA, 2006a). After Katrina, FEMA developed this Guide to assist homeowners and builders to improve the protection of existing homes from high wind. While a significant volume of guidance has been developed for designing new structures to resist high winds, much less has been developed to guide homeowners and builders to improve the safety of existing homes. This Guide introduces technical information needed for selecting and implementing wind retrofit projects for existing homes. This Guide identifies three successive protection packages: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced, which are specifically developed for existing homes.

Although this Guide was developed for homes in the US Gulf Coast region, this course is applicable to one-family and two-family dwellings in all coastal regions and tornado prone regions. It is not applicable to manufactured (HUD Code) housing. This guide is intended for preparations being made well in advance of expected wind events. Other FEMA Guides, such as Protecting Homes from High Wind provide guidance which includes some emergency type preparations for imminent wind events.