Before and after Galveston pics.

[Donzo]

the mayor of new Orleans is not named FEMA, nor was the governor of louisiana.

and it's not New Orleans...it's the Chocolate City

[sluggish]

Interesting thing about that picture:  If you want your house to survive a hurricane, pour a concrete slab under neither it.  The only structures (four, I count) standing in the foreground have a slab under them.  If I were an insurance provider that would be a new requirement.

[Donzo]

Hell, just build the whole house out of concrete

http://www.concretenetwork.com/concrete-homes/

[Masherbrum]

Interesting thing about that picture:  If you want your house to survive a hurricane, pour a concrete slab under neither it.  The only structures (four, I count) standing in the foreground have a slab under them.  If I were an insurance provider that would be a new requirement.

I don't know if that's necessarily why they survived.   The slab is "within" the sandy soil and would be eroded just as easily from all sides of the slab, including underneath.   

[Curval]

Hell, just build the whole house out of concrete

http://www.concretenetwork.com/concrete-homes/

We do it here, have done for centuries, although limestone was the precursor.