Hurricane Disney: Stormstruck in Orlando

I was down in Orlando last week — land of asphalt, ChemLawns, and Mickey Mouse. As is typical in that part of the world, it was too hot outside and too cold inside. In one of the mammoth Disney hotels, I was participating for two days in the Tenth Anniversary Annual Meeting of an organization called FLASH. FLASH is the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes — it used to be the Florida Alliance for Safe Homes, which explains the "L." FLASH is all about disaster resistance, so the sessions were about communicating fire-resistant construction practices, hurricane codes, 2x4 projectile penetration of wall systems, safe rooms in houses — cool stuff like that. In one session, two different speakers addressed pandemic flu — not because that's in the purview of FLASH, but because the challenges of educating the general public to those concerns are very similar to the challenges FLASH faces in communicating disaster resistance. Organizations involved with FLASH include insurance companies, manufacturers of building products that relate to disaster resistance (Simpson Strong-Tie, G-P Dens-Shield, etc.), product retailers like Home Depot, state agencies, the National Weather Service, FEMA, a few builders of disaster-resistant homes, such as Mercedes Homes, and the Salvation Army. As the conference progressed, participants at the conference were keeping a wary eye on Hurricane Gustav, which was heading for the Gulf Coast, and a few had to leave early. I was there to talk about how to get green building priorities more in line with disaster-resistance priorities. I did this by talking about passive survivability — the idea that we should be designing and building houses that will maintain livable conditions in the event of extended power outages, loss or heating fuel, or shortages of water. That presentation was really well received — something new to worry about for a group that lives and breathes disasters and emergencies. But what I wanted to tell you about isn't passive survivability or even the FLASH conference per se — but rather, an evening event we attended at Disney's Epcot Center. Conference attendees were invited to a special evening reception at Epcot's new exhibit: Stormstruck: A Tale of Two Houses, which is sponsored by FLASH and a number of its commercial partners. As someone who rebels against everything Disney, I gotta say: Stormstruck is awesome! Visitors are issued 3-D glasses and ushered into a room that holds maybe 20 people. It was set up as the inside of a house, looking out through picture windows at the yard, street, garage, house across the street, etc. The tour guide issued a storm warning and told us to be sure our safety glasses were on. You can probably guess what's next. Disney's best 3-D visualization modelers have created a remarkably photo-realistic simulation of a Category 4 or 5 storm. You watch, mesmerized, as winds pick up, deck chairs and barbecue grills blow away, tree limbs come down, shingles are ripped from the garage, and part of the house across the street blows apart.

As the winds pick up, an occasional 2x4 or limb crashes through the window in front of you, accompanied by a gust of wind, a spray of mist, and the vibrations of a robust surround-sound speaker system. All this is 3-D remember, so the tree branch seems to end up just inches in front of you. But it's not just a show; it's a lesson in storm-resistant construction practices. After the storm, each participant takes part in figuring out how to rebuild. The tour guide — a real person in front of the room — asks a series of questions and, based on the group score, the house and garage are rebuilt accordingly. We were asked to choose between features like a gable roof or a hip roof, metal strapping vs. nails alone for framing, inward-opening or outward-opening entry doors, clay-tile vs. storm-rated asphalt shingles, replanting of magnolia vs. a native sea pine in the yard, and whether or not windows should be opened during a storm to equalize pressure inside and outside. Each of us keyed our responses by pushing either the "A" or "B" button in front of us. Then, based on the group-averaged answers to these questions, we experienced another storm — exciting, like the first one, but hopefully with some of the storm-resistant features in place that we had collectively chosen. More crashing storm debris, more howling wind, and projectiles crashing through the windows in front of us. More gusts of wind and light mists of spray to add a semblance of realism. The show was good enough that I went through twice — the second time later in the evening, after our group had been able to enjoy more time at the bar. Guys being guys (yes, the FLASH group is mostly men) and lubricated by alcohol, our group decided to intentionally answer all the questions wrong. A knowledgeable group (some of whom were probably consultants to Disney on the exhibit), we succeeded in scoring a near-zero, and the ensuing destruction the more exciting. There are some other nice displays in the Stormstruck pavilion, but the show is definitely the lead attraction — and educational to boot! Anyway, if you have the misfortune of being dragged down to Orlando and Disney World, by all means check out Stormstruck: a Tale of Two Houses.