Building Safety Month Concludes with a Focus on Disaster Preparedness
The virtual celebration for Building Safety Month ends with week 4, which highlights disaster preparedness. This week the Code Council, its members and partners emphasize the cornerstone of advanced planning for devastating events like hurricanes, floods, snowstorms, tornadoes, wildfires and earthquakes to help individuals and communities increase the health and safety of their population during and after a disaster.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) published a landmark 2020 study, Building Codes Save: A Nationwide Study, showing how modern hazard-resistant building codes lead to major reduction in property losses from predictable natural disasters. The FEMA report calculates losses from three types of natural hazards (earthquakes, flooding, and hurricane winds) for each state and Washington, D.C. Cumulative losses avoided across the US from codes that have already been adopted are projected to grow to over $132 billion by the year 2040. For more information on Building Codes Save, click here.