mrs. chapman-henderson, do you want to add to that? >> yes. and i'm only familiar with the building code mitigation aspects so i could hardly endorse those aspects. and our partnership wiis probab evenly divided on other insurance issues. with respect to evacuation, it seems the way we would like to look at it is in an ideal sense. differentiating between those that reside in a flood zone or not is step one. we always urge citizens and throughout i think that is union formed that if you live in a flood zone you have to leave because there are too many variables in life safety being a challenge there. beyond that, the homeowner or the business owner or anyone who is seeking to take shelter from a storm that is coming, they have knowledge of what their house can do -- a performance forecast, for example -- then they can confidently make decisions about evacuation and take themselves out of the ov overevacuation problems. i think you were talking about for florida where the east coast of n. ended up heading west and causing problems. people spent

mrs. leslie chapman henderson is the president and c.e.o.of the federal alliance for safe homes, a national nonprofit dedicated to strengthening homes and safeguarding families from disaster. her testimony will address how model building codes can improve the resiliency of structures and reduce the economic cost of post-storm recovery efforts and a lot of her experience comes from the experience that florida suffered after the megahurricane, hurricane andrew in 1992. mr. frank nutter is the president of the reinsurance association of america. he currently serves on the board of the international hurricane research center, the council of american meteorological society and board for center for atmospheric research. he will address the economic impacts of hurricane planning, damage and recovery on vulnerable communities. so, we thank you all. and, dr. droegemeir, i want to thank you because you left your vacation early to come back to testify today. so, thank you very much. i could say all of the obvious things about the destructive force of h

mrs. chapman-henderson mentioned can save lives and property and reduce the economic losses and since you were in the reinsurance business and how does this improved forecasting and modeling also bring down the economic loss? >> there is no question as has been mentioned by several people improved forecasting where people can be out of harm's way is going to save lives that will not necessarily save property damage unless we do something to mitigate these properties. let me cite a statistic. losses from hurricane andrew in '92 as you mentioned cost about $20 billion in today's dollars of insured losses that would have been reduced by 50% for residential property and 40% for commercial property if it destroyed damaged structures had been built in compliance with florida's 2004 building code to ms. chapman-henderson's point that we know how to do this there are ways to do it and it has value we cite another statistic helms bill to the modern florida building code experienced a 60% reduction in frequency actual losses and 42% reduction of loss severity meaning dollar amount of insurance clai

mr. nutter and miss chapman henderson. >> there's an immediate response. the government has not always been fairly prepared tour maybe even fairly criticized for its response. but the reality is those who might come in thought help need access to those areas which include debris removal anything that would focus on first responding areas would be a great value in reducing these losses. >> all right. dr. spinrad i'm going to test your forecasting ability. okay. we've will el niÑo is arriving. it is the warming of the pacific waters which tend to lesson the activities in the atlantic hurricane. now thus far we haven't had any activity in the atlantic on hurricanes. so, i mean of my significance, so tell us what's going to happen in the atlantic. >> the first -- first i would point out that my meteorologist friends are this charge of marketing not production. with that in mind, i'm an oceanographer, that's my qualifying statement. the outlook that we provide every year at the start of hurricane season from which the information that you have comes. this year