Ricky and Tish Wilkerson bought the home in Gulfport, Miss., primarily because it was a good deal.  “I’d been curious about ICFs for quite a while,” says Ricky, “The structural integrity just impressed me. When I saw this house, I had to buy it.”

The home, built with PolySteel Insulating Concrete Forms, would be put to the test in late 2005 when it took a direct hit from Hurricane Katrina.  The Wilkerson’s  had not yet actually moved in, but were living in a nearby apartment when the storm, rapidly gaining in strength, turned directly towards the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

“My wife was freaking out,” says Ricky.  “She wanted to leave, and I said, ‘it’s too late to leave’…  Once I saw the size of the storm and the winds, I said, ‘we’re going to the bunker’—that’s what I call this house—and she said okay, I feel safe there.”

With the newscasts reporting offshore winds in excess of 160 mph, they headed to the still unfinished home, along with three other families they’d invited.

“At 5:30 [a.m.] my wife woke me up because the power was out,” he says.  By 8 o’clock, it was a full-fledged hurricane.  The trees outside were kissing the ground—not waving, but laying down.” 

“It sounded like a helicopter landing right beside you,” says Tish.  “The pressure in the house, it felt like my ears were going to explode.  It felt like you were in a plane.”

She recalls looking out the window at a neighbor’s mobile home. “I saw the side of the trailer just go.  It just flew away.  You could see inside their kitchen, their couch, their beds.”

  “Inside it was so calm,” she continues.  “Outside you’d see a piece of siding come flying by, but inside, nothing was moving, nothing was shaking.”     

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“We didn’t experience any of that,” says Ricky.  “We just sat back.  In fact, at one point, my children said, ‘Mom, why do we have to be in here?’” The kids were staying in the daylight basement for additional safety, but even upstairs the home was remarkably solid.  “A friend stayed upstairs in the kitchen,” says Tish, “asleep.”

“We had no idea how bad the storm was, no idea,” she says.  “We topped that hill, [after the hurricane] and houses were completely gone.”

Their ICF home, on the other hand, was nearly unscathed. The only damage was an area of vinyl siding that had been stripped away in the ferocious winds. The home has since been refinished with an acrylic stucco to make it even more storm resistant.  It was only after the area of siding was gone that Ricky discovered which brand of ICF his home had been built with.  Seeing the PolySteel logo and a toll-free number, he called them up to tell of his remarkable experience.

“I felt extremely safe,” says Ricky.  “I could hear the wind outside, but inside nothing moved.  Everything stayed just as it should have.”

The Wilkersons say many of their friends are now looking at ICFs, and Ricky reports it’s “the only thing I’m going to live in from now on.”  He has already used Polysteel to complete some smaller projects, and is considering building a home on an adjoining lot with PolySteel as well.

“South of I-10, this is the only type of house I’d live in,” he says.  “When you rebuild, this is what you need to use.  I don’t know what the cost difference is, but it would save insurance companies millions of dollars.  They ought to be promoting this stuff, because it would save them millions and millions of dollars.”