Last House Standing: Mexico Beach Resident Who Radically Overbuilt His Home Calls Out Climate Liars [View all]

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Sand Palace, Russell King’s House in Mexico Beach.


Owners of a home built to the latest building code in Mexico Beach, Florida, retrieve belongings from the top two stories that were pushed by Michael’s storm surge onto Highway 98.

In Mexico Beach, Florida, Russell King’s house is the only beachfront property that survived Hurricane Michael with little damage. But the fact it survived the latest record-breaking hurricane doesn’t give King peace of mind. Can it withstand the next storm that comes its way?

Climate scientists predict that storms will continue to intensify, and King takes this to heart, worrying the next one could take down his house. I met King on October 14, four days after Hurricane Michael made landfall and wiped out a large portion of Mexico Beach, a small town on Florida’s panhandle. The storm swept into the area with winds of up to 155 miles per hour (mph), just two shy of reaching a Category 5 storm designation.

King’s home, which he owns with his nephew, Dr. Lebron Lackey, was built to withstand 240 mph winds, well beyond the standards of the current building code. Nearby houses built to the latest code all sustained substantial damage. Most of those still standing will likely need to be torn down. About a mile east on Highway 98, the main road along the coast, the top two floors of a four-story house moved from the beach to the road. The bottom floors were obliterated.

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“I’m tired of politicians lying to us. The American people need to understand they are lying,” King said. “The people who are denying climate change are not telling the truth.” He likened the misinformation campaign against climate science to the campaign to protect the tobacco industry, which claimed cigarettes were no threat to human health. He was well aware that the fossil fuel industry is using the same tobacco industry playbook and lobbyists to sow doubt about climate change. “There is nothing clean about coal,” King said, just like there is nothing healthy about smoking cigarettes.

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/10/21/mexico-beach-house-hurricane-michael-trump-climate-denier-politicians