In 1995, within two weeks, the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) were hit by Hurricane Luis and Hurricane Marilyn. Hurricane Luis caused $300 million worth of damage, while Hurricane Marilyn caused even more of an impact. Marilyn was responsible for eight deaths and the loss or damage of 21,000 homes, including 75% of the residences on St. Thomas. As a result, USVI damage estimates from Hurricane Marilyn were $2.1 billion.
Hurricane Luis Damage: $300 million
Hurricane Marilyn Damage: $2.1 billion
Through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, just over $30 million was granted to the USVI to provide the territory with resources for design, construction, construction management oversight, and quality assurance and quality control of mitigation projects. The grant also funded a vital part of the region’s post-disaster mitigation plan — the Home Protection Roofing Program (HPRP). One of the key components of the HPRP was to address the issue of poorly attached roofs which could easily be torn from houses by high winds.
A little over 20 years later, in 2017, Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck the USVI. In the wake of those storms, a FEMA Mitigation Assessment Team was deployed to investigate damage. One of their goals was to assess a sample of St. Thomas HPRP homes to determine how the replacement roofs fared.
The result: no structural damage to those roofs was observed. Prior to 1995 and Hurricane Marilyn, the code provisions for wind resistance were weak, but following FEMA’s post-storm recommendation, USVI adopted the 1994 Uniform Building Code, which provided significantly more wind resistance requirements. As a result, although Hurricanes Irma and Maria were more severe than Hurricane Marilyn, structures that were repaired or constructed to the 1994 codes showed far less roof damage.
