Now are you ready for reinforced concrete??

Keep building your "houses" out of sticks. This is what happens. When will you get serious and build with reinforced concrete from top to bottom (yes, even the roof can be reinforced concrete). Add 1-inch thick steel window shutters embedded in the concrete beams and you have a bomb-proof (and Katrina proof) house. A little more treatment and this house could be flood proof. Or, it could be elevated on concrete beams. If "concrete house" brings to your mind an ugly square box, please take a drive around rural Italy, especially down south. These houses are beautiful. Between the hurricanes and tornadoes and other weather events, you need to get over your cheap stick-built obsession with cheapness. The Gulf of Mexico is a giant weather death-machine. There is no place quite like it in the world. It is no place for stick built houses.