Built to Last
How We Survive
Marketplace
5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 9 November 2022
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What do a burning shed, a beautiful above-ground bunker and an island of misfits all have in common? They are all places we visit on our hunt for solutions.
This episode, we find out what it will take to stay in the places we love. We play around at a research lab where scientists are figuring out how to make our homes and buildings more resilient to the elements. Then, we leave the lab to see what it looks like to implement safer building methods and materials in real life; first, at a plastic surgeon’s impressive home — 18 feet above sea level. Then, we head south to explore an island where living with the water is a way of life.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's 5 a.m. in Richburg, South Carolina, still dark out, and I'm standing outside a fence watching a wooden shed burn to the ground. |
| 0:12.8 | Crispy Mode now, we got all the crackles going on. |
| 0:16.2 | This is Dr. Anne Coe. |
| 0:18.4 | She's a structural engineer, and she, or her team anyway anyway started this fire. |
| 0:24.0 | There we go. |
| 0:25.0 | Oh, big flame right there. |
| 0:26.0 | Yeah, I'm stepping back too. |
| 0:29.0 | It's getting hot. We watch as the flames engulf the roof and siding and the glowing skeleton of the frame begins to appear. |
| 0:37.0 | We're looking at collapse pretty soon here. The roof's totally gone. |
| 0:42.0 | It's super eerie out here. |
| 0:44.1 | That roar you hear over the crackle of flames |
| 0:47.2 | is a wall of fans producing a 35 mile per hour wind. |
| 0:52.1 | Firefighters are standing by as people in protective gear |
| 0:55.9 | scurry around the shed checking foil-covered heat sensors and taking video. |
| 1:00.8 | So yeah, this is no accident. |
| 1:04.0 | Oh gosh, I've actually lost count of how many houses have been destroyed in the name of science. |
| 1:11.0 | I'm at a research lab run by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, |
| 1:17.6 | IBHS for short. It's a non-profit funded by the insurance industry that studies how to make our homes and |
| 1:25.0 | buildings more resilient to the elements. |
| 1:28.0 | Anne is the chief engineer. |
| 1:30.3 | Today her team is testing a very real and very scary scenario. |
| 1:35.0 | 20 feet away from that burning shed is an actual house. |
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