Will your family have a home to return to after the next hurricane?
Former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Dr. Ben Carson joins FIU engineering dean Dr. Jack Puleo and wind engineering professor Dr. Arindam Gan Chowdhury to explore how stronger homes can protect families, what to check before a storm, and why the real cost of housing includes what happens when disaster strikes.
You work for years to build a life. A hurricane can put the home at the center of it at risk in a matter of hours. From windows and garage doors to roof connections, this conversation explores the places where protection can fail and why waiting for a storm warning is too late to begin planning.
At FIU, researchers use hurricane-force wind and rain to study how buildings break and how to make them more resilient. Puleo and Chowdhury explain why a proposed facility combining wind and water at large scale could reveal risks that separate tests miss, including what happens when flooding changes the soil holding a structure in place.
The stakes reach beyond the storm itself: repair bills, insurance costs, and whether families have somewhere to live afterward. The researchers discuss their hope that stronger homes could reduce future losses and insurance costs, while reminding the next generation of engineers that every structure they work on affects real people.
In this episode: Protecting homes and families before a hurricane; vulnerable windows, doors, and roof connections; hurricane-resistant openings; FIU’s Wall of Wind; testing wind and water together; aging infrastructure and power outages; repair costs and potential insurance savings; curiosity and compassion in engineering.