A unique Florida community, situated approximately 15 miles northeast of Fort Myers, which calls itself “the Hometown of Tomorrow,” did not flood or even lose power following hurricane Milton’s landfall on the Florida coast last week because it was specifically built to withstand hurricanes.
Babcock Ranch, which opened in 2018 and is about the size of Manhattan, only suffered a few downed trees and damaged traffic lights during Hurricane Milton, and even provided shelter for around 2,000 Floridians during the storm.
Every structure in the community, which is home to roughly 10,000 residents, was built to withstand winds of up to 150 mph.
The community’s power grid consists of a 150-megawatt solar farm with sophisticated underground electricity transmission lines which did not even falter during the storm while more than 3 million fellow Floridians lost power.
To ensure structures don’t flood, the community is built 30 feet above sea level on preserved wetlands which naturally collect excess rainwater.
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Homes in the community run from around $300,000 to over $4 million. The community has plans for upwards of 19,500 homes.
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Shelter from the storm
Around 2,000 people found shelter from the storm at Babcock Ranch, with about 400 people sheltering in its K-12 school and another 1,600 in the community’s 40,000-square-foot sports facility.
Syd Kitson, former NFL player and one of the town’s co-founders told the New York Times, “When Governor DeSantis made the announcement that Babcock Ranch was open we saw a very big surge in evacuees. It saved a lot of lives in some really dangerous areas.”
The town’s ability to fend off hurricanes was first showcased in 2022 when Hurricane Ian, a Category 4 storm, struck the town resulting in only minimal damage, while surrounding communities suffered upwards of $115 billion in losses.
Kitson said, “Mother Nature is going to rule every time. But what we try to do is mitigate as much of that risk as possible and make our community as resilient as we can.”
While the cost of damages due to Hurricane Milton continue to roll in, in Manatee County, approximately 74 miles southeast of Babcock Ranch, Milton caused an estimated $351 million in damages in the unincorporated areas of the county excluding some large city centers.
Seventy residential homes were completely destroyed along with two commercial properties and a total of 3,703 residential and commercial properties sustained major damage, a county news release said.
Milton made landfall on Oct. 9, just a few weeks after Hurricane Helene impacted the region.
Helene destroyed 542 homes and caused more than $357 million in damages to both residential and commercial properties according to the county’s preliminary numbers.
