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Notes -
More importantly, this also isn't their first rodeo.
Florida is well-acquainted to dealing with hurricanes. They've had devastating category 5 storms in recent living memory that were extremely and extensively damaging, yes. But there's something odd I've begun to note with hurricanes, especially in the recent years - people have begun to learn from them. Infrastructure modified. Procedures amended. Housing codes changed. So that when the next one comes through, people and infrastructure are actually better able to handle it than the previous one.
This is the reason why Helene is so devastating - this is a region of the country that just doesn't have to deal with this sort of weather. It's a one-off fluke, their one-in-a-century storm. No one sensibly could have predicted it would have happened, no one could have accounted for it. Mother nature be like that, sometimes.
Yes, there was a marked difference between the impacts that occurred in areas that were built up in the 70's and 80's and 90's to those built up post-2003ish.
Anywhere that has lucked out to not receive a hurricane hit in a few decades is more likely to get totally obliterated when one does come through.
But houses built to recent codes and specced to survive high winds can make it through mostly without damage, sans a tree falling on it or something.
Its a 'silver lining' of a hurricane strike, the stuff not built to current code will go away, and ideally be replaced with structures that will survive future strikes, and so the whole state becomes hardened against future impacts.
That, and the absolute speed and efficiency with which utilities are restored and cleanup ensues is a stark contrast from how things went even 20 years ago.
I don't know if there's a better answer where structures that are vulnerable get updated or replaced (with whose money?) over time, or if we are just resigned to having to clean up and rebuild such places after the fact.
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