You're watching southwest Florida.

InFocus.

Coming up, the difficulties of protecting homes from the next storm.

Homeowners say it's already hard getting government dollars meant to help them lift their flood.

Vulnerable houses with cuts in federal spending.

It could get worse.

For years, the body mass index was the method used to determine optimal health.

But a new study sheds doubt on the BMI, and we learn about the challenges of bringing the art and psyche of Vincent van Gogh to life.

Hello, I'm Sandra Victorova.

Thank you for joining us.

The federal government sends billions of dollars to our state to help rebuild after Hurricane.

With a changing climate and increased housing development, more property owners will need that federal help.

Not once, but possibly several times.

In fact, Florida ranks third in the country for repeated flood claims.

More than 26,000 properties in the state are considered repetitive.

Lost properties, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Repeat.

Flood victims do get top priority when applying for grant dollars to help lift or modify their homes to prevent future damage, but applying for those funds is already difficult, and experts worry that cuts in federal spending will make it even tougher.

When Lori Davis showed us the damage Hurricane Helene caused in her Sarasota County home last year, she couldn't hide the heartbreak.

Streets of Swift.

It's like again and again.

They were covered in slick.

Like a slow turnover, like furious, but losing get replayed.

Tired because Lori says her home is flooded six times since 2021, 36in her property and flood insurance pay to fix the damage after each storm.

Yet her frustration is growing.

Shortly after Hurricane Ian, she started searching for grants to help her pay the nearly $250,000 it would cost to elevate her home.

She's still waiting to find out if she'll get any of those grants.

It shouldn't take this long.

Lori and her husband, Nathan, want to hang on to their southwest Florida home, but their house near Venice is in a flood zone right off the Myakka River and picking up before and after each storm has taken a toll.

I told him after Milton, I was like, I don't know if I can take this anymore.

He would never want to go back to Ohio.

But he said that's something that if possible, next year, if we don't hear from anybody about this grant.

Laura says they've spent more than 1000 hours filling out applications, gathering paperwork and checking their application portals every week.

Taxes are a lot easier when you have three different grants that you're trying to apply for.

It all gets mixed up.

These grant programs are often funded by FEMA and managed by the state or local governments.

Lori says the application process is cumbersome.

You have your insurance adjusters that come out and speak to you at FEMA, inspectors that come out inspect.

Why do I have to keep proving to you when you were here and you seen it?

That's so frustrating.

Noah Taylor and his team at Sarasota County Stormwater Department help residents apply for these grants.

He says it can take a year or two to get through the paperwork on the front end.

The back end can be tough as well.

You have to submit receipts and progress reports throughout the entire thing.

And FEMA and the state will nickel and dime every single thing.

So if you're using aluminum nails versus steel nails, you're going to want to know why.

Taylor says few people apply because of financial barriers.

They'll need some money upfront because it's a reimbursement program.

So they're unwilling either to take out loans or move in that direction.

Davis is hoping she'll get money from a program called Resilient Srq.

She had hoped to qualify for another program, Elevate Florida, where the homeowner comes up with 25% of the cost and the state covers the rest.

But she's been struggling with bills.

We are waiting for FEMA to reimburse us for everything that we have lost and submitted nine months ago, and that's the money we're using to pay for this, because we work just to survive.

Taylor says there are homeowners like Lori that could benefit from federal dollars in Sarasota County.

We went from a little over 300 repetitive last structures last year.

Since the storms, we now have 500 more.

Despite the need, Taylor doesn't know what the future funding of these grant programs will be.

The Trump administration is cutting billions out of the federal budget, including at FEMA.

What is the future of those programs?

Very uncertain.

I think, to put it mildly.

Ethan Fry is with the Florida Policy Institute, a nonprofit that researches the economic impact of state measures and budgets on Floridians.

He said there is uncertainty about programs like Elevate Florida.

Funding right now came through FEMA's hazard Grant mitigation program.

Right.

And so the administration announced that they no longer want to, provide funding through that funding source.

While he supports cuts to the federal government and a more efficient FEMA, she says this grant will change her family's life, and she could finally stop worrying about every storm.

You stack up the center blocks outside, you get sandbags.

We have all of that prepared.

It's just, where are we going to go?

Where are we going to go?

Probably in our vehicles, on the side of a road somewhere.

And like big girl, As hurricane season begins to ramp up, experts want us to remember the dangers of high winds and rising waters.

That's especially true on a construct site.

WGCU's Emma Rodriguez visited Manhattan Construction to learn how their team gets ready for landfall.

Southwest Florida's growing population means there's always a construction project happening.

And because our region is so vulnerable to storms, companies like Manhattan Construction have to react to warnings days before the rest of us.

Dean Rahmani, Manhattan safety manager for the region, says hurricanes can do more than just sit back costly projects not only, damage done to a building, damage done to potential projectiles that might leave the jobsite and hit other neighbors or whatever is around the neighborhood of what we're building ahead of a hurricane.

Materials and garbage that can become airborne or secured or stored at an indoor warehouse.

Equipment is removed from sites which did not happen in the case of Charlotte County Sunseeker.

During Hurricane Ian, when a crane crashed directly into the building.

Manhattan's hurricane plan has four phases, which starts by notifying clients and employees of a projected storm.

In phase two, production slows down if landfall may be close to the area.

Manhattan also takes photos of projects before landfall to reference after the storm when checking for damage.

In phase three, about 72 hours before the storm, work comes to a screeching halt.

Production stops.

No deliveries, no nothing.

No one's allowed to put a nail in a two by four.

The fourth and final phase, starting 48 hours before landfall, has workers powering signs, securing projectiles and going home to prepare with their families.

Manhattan says employee safety gets priority over project timelines.

We will shut jobs down earlier than some, just to make sure that folks not only are working in unsafe conditions, but they can go home and make their homes hurricane safe or safely get out of the area if there's a need to evacuate.

Bryant added that every storm has been a learning experience for the company.

In the case of Ian Manhattan, Southwest Florida procured materials from other regions to help repair damage to projects.

Project Superintendent Paul Schmid says the company's construction standards help prevent major damage or delays.

You can see our structure is a fully concrete structure with, reinforced masonry on the exterior, and it's going to withstand pretty much any storm that we're going to get.

Manhattan says most, if not all, construction companies have a plan similar to theirs.

For Southwest Florida in focus.

I'm Emma Rodriguez in Fort Myers.

Getting ahead of the storm, researchers are building the future of storm predictions by recreating massive storm surges and category five winds.

Capturing the power of hurricane force winds is routine for researchers at Florida International University in Miami.

By harnessing gales in excess of 150mph, the findings have helped build stronger communities that can withstand an imposing storm.

WGCUs Tom James and Janine Zeitlin takes us through a fierce wall of wind and its impact on weather forecasting.

Well here today.

You're in front of the incredible wall of wind here at Florida International University.

For you as a leader when it comes to research, especially for hurricane research, and that's what the wall of wind is all about.

We have 12 huge fans that when we go to peak speed, we can get to category 557 mile per hour winds.

The wall of wind helps researchers better understand how wind impacts infrastructure so communities can mitigate hazards.

How can we strengthen the built environment, our homes, our schools, our businesses so that they can be more resilient up against the next storm?

The wall of wind has evolved since it began in 2005.

After Hurricane Andrew's category five winds annihilated thousands of homes in the Miami area.

The 1992 storm left more than 160,000 people homeless, according to the federal government.

After Hurricane Andrew, Florida woke up to be the leader in a lot of things when it came to emergency management, preparedness, safety research.

The wall of wind started because of Hurricane Andrew.

Our building codes improved because of Hurricane Andrew.

As the country faces more extreme weather and for you is seeking to evolve the research yet again with the planning of what's been called the world's largest wind and wave research lab, the National Science Foundation awarded a $12.8 million design grant to an FIU led team that includes universities across the nation and a wind tunnel company.

There is no other system out there right now that will be this big, this powerful and bring in hazards of wind and storm surge under one roof.

So it will be a one of a kind, very unique research facility.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Storm surge typically causes the most devastation during hurricanes.

As Southwest Florida experienced during Hurricane Ian in 2022, the lab is still years away, but FIU has already constructed a wind only test site to gather data that will be used to design the full scale project.

So it's proactive.

If we can do research, how we can strengthen structures ahead of time and building codes.

We have the strongest ones in Florida today, but we need better building codes across the nation.

So our research will help enhance and push the messaging stronger building codes.

So there's less damage from those future storms.

To learn more about the future of Storm research, we're joined by one of the investigators for the future niche facility, Doctor Naveed Tao Dari, an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Florida International University.

Doctor Torvill Dari welcome.

Thank you so much for having me, Sandra.

So I know you're essentially trying to mimic the impact that that Mother Nature has like never before, creating, you know, incredibly powerful storm surge combined with incredibly powerful winds.

You know, we all see the destruction after these hurricanes, but but so help us to understand why is it so important to combine these powerful forces?

What are the tangible results you think you're going to get out of this research?

Essentially, we want to represent or simulate what happens in reality, right?

We want to simulate the hurricane hazard impacting our, coastal buildings, for example.

And, we know wave and surge and wind hazard happen at the same time.

But traditionally, we have looked at these hazards separately.

And in this we are trying to we hope, to represent what actually happens during a hurricane event, to be able to represent what actually happens in the nature.

We have to be able to simulate category five hurricane winds.

We have to be able to simulate very large waves and surge at the same time, and only very large facilities can accommodate such capabilities.

So, so we are hoping to in the niche facility, we are hoping to, simulate these events at at or very close to full scale or what we expect to happen in reality.

From a practical perspective, I obviously it will.

I can imagine it can help engineers, contractors figure out the best way to build right structures that are, I'll say, near the coast or on the coast, near rivers.

But can it go down to the nitty gritty of as to what materials or even the best to use in construction, you, touched on a very important, justification for having these, facilities because it requires a, large investment from, taxpayers to to, construct these facilities.

But it's important to look at the benefits, benefit, cost ratio.

A lot of the research that has been done in, for example, wind, hurricane wind research has delivered, 10 to 1 benefit cost ratio, meaning by updating the building codes, we have, prevented nearly, 5.6 or excess of $5.6 billion in damage.

Same for, standards.

Building standards have been updated by these types of, research.

And, we can, as you mentioned, we can test and justify implementing of cost effective retrofitting strategies.

So how, for example, different building materials or, or different, structural, mitigation strategies, will perform under such intense wind and wave action will pave the way for, implementation into practice in the future.

Doctor Dari, we so appreciate your time.

Thank you very much.

Absolutely.

It was a pleasure.

Thank you so much.

For years, people have used body mass index to figure out if someone is obese or if their weight is healthy relative to their height.

By the late 1990s, the World Health Organization adopted BMI as a primary screening tool to forecast health risks.

However, a new study by the University of Florida finds that BMI is deeply flawed and that there are much better ways to help predict future health concerns.

To learn more about the study's findings, we are joined now by Doctor Arch Manus, a professor and vice chair for research in the Department of Community Health and Family Medicine at UF.

Thank you for joining us, Doctor Manus.

Yeah, thanks.

I appreciate the opportunity.

So let's start with this.

What exactly does BMI tell us and why?

Or what does your research say about why that system might be flawed?

So what BMI tells you is it basically takes height and weight.

And it, it creates a sort of a computation to sort of, indicate what your sort of general, your body fat proportion is.

All right.

That's what it's doing.

It's an indirect way of doing that.

We are we have other ways to whether it's waist height ratio, whether it's waist to hip ratio.

But it's a it's a pretty easy, quick way to do that.

What we use it for is to predict risk for like cardiovascular diseases, like diabetes, even cancer.

So it's a it's a very widely used thing around the world, in fact.

And so that's what it's what it's used for.

It is very easy to get just height and weight.

And then we use a computation from there.

So it's very inexpensive and it's easy to get.

So why do you think this is not the system we should be using?

Why is it, you know, why do you feel it's deeply flawed based on your research?

Well, it's been around for a long time, and, one of the things about it is we started doing studies probably over 10 or 12 years ago looking at this.

And what we found was that particularly for people who are considered to be normal or at a healthy BMI, we were finding that people had, other, other sort of problems like, you know, elevated glucose, hypertension, things like that.

And so we did we try to find other ways to do it because we said, well, if how are we going to find out who those people are?

We looked at things that range from grip strength to other things to try to figure out all these people who were saying, we're healthy, we're really healthy because BMI really was having some problems.

And so, we looked at other ways to do it.

And, and that sort of led us where we're going now, which is, rather than looking only at, it's another measure, indirect measure of body fat percentage.

Why don't we just use a direct measure, body fat percentage, since that's really what we're trying to get to.

And that, I assume, is what you would call bioelectrical impedance analysis.

Did I say that right?

You did.

Well, bioelectrical impedance analysis is a way to look for your and compute your body fat.

And what it does is it runs intellectual impulse through your body and so certain parts of your body, are going to conduct electricity better than others.

So, so body fat, fat itself is not a very good conductor.

But water muscle are better.

So that's why we would use something like that.

And, and it's, it's also accounts for your age and sex as well.

But but we would use that.

We haven't historically used that because well, a couple of reasons.

One is the, the, the way that we do it is that some of the studies from back in the late 1990s suggested it wasn't very good, although there's a lot of new studies that show that it actually is pretty accurate.

But when it gets down to it, it's pretty easy to to just get height and weight.

The problem with just getting height and weight and using BMI is that it misclassify as people.

Doctor, what do you hope other scientists medical experts will get from your research on BMI?

Well, what I really hope is that we move away from just continually writing criticisms of how BMI mis classifies people, and move to a strategy that looks like it is an improvement.

I think that when we want to talk about changing practice, what we hope is that is that rather than just saying, hey, BMI is no good, it's, you know, you got all these people with normal weight obesity and they have these problems.

Oh, when we got these people were bodybuilders and they're not getting picked up.

But this is the best we have.

My contention is that's not the best we have, that we don't have something better.

And if we use that to integrate that into practice, it will actually improve our predictions.

For diet and for disease prevention.

Remember, one of the things that we do when we take things like BMI and classify people as overweight or obese is we're really trying to prevent other diseases, downstream diseases like diabetes or, or, stroke or deadly diseases.

Absolutely.

And so if we misclassify people, we don't pick out the right people.

Then just having an easy, inexpensive strategy that doesn't work, that just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me.

Doctor arch Manus, we so appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Well, thanks a lot.

I appreciate.

After the break, immerse yourself in the art of Vincent van Gogh.

We hear from the man responsible for bringing the pieces like a starry night to life in Tampa.

Despite having only sold one painting during his lifetime, Vincent van Gogh has become one of the most celebrated artists in history.

Now his masterworks come to life in a 20,000 square foot multi-media exhibit called Van Gogh The Immersive Experience in Tampa.

You can step into the Dutch artist paintings as his most compelling works become 360 degree, two story tall projections that dance to music to learn how the artist's genius was brought to life in this unique style.

We're joined by John Zoller, executive producer of Exhibition Hub, the company that produced this experience.

Welcome, John.

Thanks for joining us.

Thanks, Sandra.

Great to meet you.

And to be here talking about Van Gogh, the immersive experience soon to open in Tampa.

So it's been 135 years since Van Gogh passed away.

What do you think it is about his life, his his work, his story that is endeared him to fans for so long?

Well, Vincent van Gogh has an incredible personal story that I think we all really relate to.

Someone who really struggled with wondering what his calling was, but ending up creating these incredible works of art.

Also, his artwork is is immortal.

It creates incredible illustrative concepts that we can understand, but delivers them in him in emotional way that we can also relate to.

It's what gives his work this this everlasting appeal to all of us around the world.

Tell me about the challenges of taking art and making it this multimedia experience.

Like how do you do it?

Well, it is definitely a labor of love.

It's certainly very intensive.

We have over 400 works of Van Gogh was featured throughout the experience, so we have to do is we have to storyboard out frame by frame, what each of these paintings is going to represent throughout the storytelling of the immersive experience, which really is an incredible emotional journey in the full immersion experience.

You're completely surrounded by Van Gogh's immortal works such as Starry Night, and in that final part of the experience, we talk about Van Go's mental state, where you sort of you can sort of experience and empathize with the artist through his struggles as an artist.

But really what we find is that Van Gogh did connect with the world by creating these beautiful works of art that live on today.

Well, you mentioned his his mental state and his struggle with his mental health.

Is there sort of a message you hope to convey in tapping into that part of his life?

Well, you know, I think with Van Gogh, one of the things that I think about as someone who has been able to work with his his artworks and to such a degree, I think about what tools are available today to help us understand the mental state of someone and how people can get help.

And I, I sometimes I really wish that he had had that same access to care.

He might have lived much longer and created so many more incredible works.

Another thing that I think is important for all of us is to say we all have these struggles within us.

How can we best address them?

Because what Van Gogh did was he recognized the pain that he was feeling, and he said, What I'm going to do instead of acting out on this pain is I'm going to channel it into beautiful works of art, which is, again, what we now have to remember him by.

And for more information on Van Gogh The Immersive Experience, you can head to Van Gogh expo.com.

Mr. Zoller, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you Sandra.

Really enjoyed it.

Thank you.

Next week, a preview of a new Ken Burns documentary that dives into the American Revolution and the role Florida played in the war for independence.

We thank you for joining us today.

Don't forget to like and subscribe to our WGCU news YouTube channel, where you can find all of our stories and extended interviews.

We hope you have a great day and we'll see you next week.