The virtual celebration for Building Safety Month ends with week 4, which highlights disaster preparedness. This week, the Code Council, its members and partners emphasize the importance of advanced planning for devastating events like hurricanes, floods, snowstorms, tornadoes, wildfires and earthquakes to help individuals and communities increase health and safety of their population during and after a disaster.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) published a landmark 2020 study, Building Codes Save: A Nationwide Study, showing how modern hazard-resistant building codes lead to a major reduction in property losses from predictable natural disasters. The FEMA report calculates losses from three types of natural hazards (earthquakes, flooding, and hurricane winds) for each state and Washington, D.C. Cumulative losses avoided across the US from codes that have already been adopted are projected to grow to over $132 billion by the year 2040.

“Uncertainty has been on the forefront of our minds all over the world,” said Code Council CEO Dominic Sims, CBO. “In this last week of Building Safety Month, we end on the note to be prepared for any circumstance, especially natural disasters. The I-Codes prevent, prepare and protect our families and communities, and the studies prove that adoption and administration of the codes will help defend us against disasters like fires, weather-related events and structural collapse.”