New laws improving construction and anchoring didn't make the old mobile homes go away - and some of them are too flimsy to bear the force of bug bombs, much less tornadoes. "Some of the homes look great and still function well, and in their [owners') minds, there's no reason to upgrade."
#Mobile home wind rating code
"Just because a mobile home was built prior to the HUD code doesn't necessarily mean it was built to an inferior wind standard," said Edward Mack of the Florida Manufactured Housing Association. Still, industry officials stress, many mobile-home makers built quality homes before 1976 adhering to voluntary industry standards. But even the industry draws the semantic line at 1976 - conceding that homes built before then are truly mobile homes. The manufactured-housing industry today bristles at the use of the term "mobile homes" to describe its products. "It was in the category of ridiculous, as far as shoddy construction." "You would have had to have been there in 1968 to see what was being put out," he said. But back in 1968, he became the state's first mobile-home construction inspector, a job he did for five years.
#Mobile home wind rating registration
Jack Pelham now oversees titles and registration for Florida's Division of Motor Vehicles. The tornadoes are usually less intense than those in the Midwest - but it is precisely those smaller tornadoes packing winds in the 70-to-90-mph range that do particular damage to poorly built mobile homes, according to meteorologists and emergency planners. An average of 60 tornadoes strike Florida every year, according to the National Weather Service. The only other state located entirely in a high-wind zone - Hawaii - had only 313 mobile homes at last count, fewer than what can be found in one typical Florida mobile-home park.įlorida also has more tornadoes per square mile than any other state. And Florida is only one of two states located entirely within zones calling for extremely wind-resistant mobile homes. The state today has about 800,000 mobile homes - more by far than any other state. The legacy of aging mobile homes is nowhere more critical than in Florida, where they are affordable and popular among low-wage earners and retired snowbirds. "The fact is, in an unregulated industry you could get some pretty god-awful units." Wallis, a University of Colorado professor and author of Wheel Estate: The Rise and Decline of Mobile Homes. "There's a legacy here of aging homes that is very problematic," said Allan D.
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