CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Windows are one of the most important features of your home during a hurricane or bad storm.
Believe it or not, good windows can prevent your home from losing its roof during one of those storms. Many folks are now going to hurricane resistant window glass to give them even more protection when the winds reach over 100 miles an hour.
Hurricane Celia hit Corpus Christi on August 3, 1970. It heavily damaged the city and after it was all said and done, 15 people in South Texas died in the storm and another 466 were injured.
Former Mayor Joe McComb remembers the day well and the aftermath where there were powerlines down everywhere and glass was all over the place in the downtown area.
"It blew out almost all of the windows in all the buildings and of course, the streets were just littered with glass and paperwork blown out of those office buildings," McComb said.
Martin Bomba also lived in Corpus Christi at the time Celia hit, but was a very young boy at the time. Now, he's the owner of Window World with three locations around the state including here in Corpus Christi.
"In Corpus Christi, we really are the hurricane window experts," Bomba said. "Our guys here are second to none when it comes to knowing the codes knowing what windstorm and TDI expects."
Bomba said over the past few years, more and more of his customers are going to hurricane resistant windows that can withstand super high winds.
"10 years ago, 20-percent maybe of what we were doing was hurricane impact windows," Bomba said. "Now, today, we find that 50 to 60-percent of what we are installing our hurricane impact windows."
While the window glass is not hurricane proof, it is designed to not send shards of glass flying.
"Two pieces of glass that are sandwiched over a laminate piece of rubber looking material for the lack of a better term, if you can imagine, clear rubber that's what it looks like two pieces or sandwich on top of that and whenever it's impacted it can break but it will not come out of the frame," Bomba explained.
The insurance institute for business and home safety said that you should close all of your interior doors and all your windows during a major wind storm event because when wind gets into your home, it can create a strong upward pressure on the home's roof and lift it off.
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