600,000 Florida homes vulnerable to incoming El Niño

In 1998, during one of the strongest El Niño climate patterns ever recorded, the deadliest tornado in Florida’s history killed 42 people, the majority of whom lived in mobile homes. This year, forecasters put the odds of a strong El Niño above 90 percent, increasing the chances of severe weather in Florida — and the state’s manufactured-housing industry estimates that 600,000 manufactured homes are not built to withstand strong winds. 

Nationally, people in mobile and manufactured homes are 15 to 20 times more likely to die in a tornado than people in permanent homes. Florida has roughly 830,000 manufactured homes, more than any other state. In 1994, after Hurricane Andrew destroyed nearly every mobile home in its path, new federal regulations required all mobile homes be built to withstand strong winds, Kate Waxman writes for Inside Climate News. However, mobile homes built before 1994 are still vulnerable, and Florida has no way of knowing exactly how many there are, as the Census doesn't track build years that closely. 

Inside Climate News reports:

“Manufactured home parks are ‘the perfect representation of environmental justice in the disaster context,’ said Andrew Rumbach of the Urban Institute. Parks were historically pushed onto the cheapest, least desirable land, Rumbach said, and today’s zoning rules often bar them from expanding or moving; residents, as he put it, are ‘locked in place.’ Many residents are what his colleague Esther Sullivan calls ‘halfway homeowners’: they own the home but rent the land beneath it, leaving them little power to make their communities safer and little ability to leave."