‘Hurricane-proof’ Florida town Babcock Ranch escaped Milton’s wrath virtually unscathed

A Florida community built specifically to withstand powerful storm-force winds made it through Hurricane Milton with barely a scratch — never even losing power as the tempest ran roughshod on the Sunshine State.

Babcock Ranch, a town about 15 miles northeast of Fort Myers, bills itself as “the Hometown of Tomorrow” on its website, a claim bolstered by its ultra-resilient structures and high-tech solar farms which ensure uninterrupted power for its roughly 10,000 residents.

Every structure in the town is built to withstand winds up to 150 mph, and its 150-megawatt solar farms and sophisticated underground electricity transmission systems kept the juice flowing even as over 3 million were left without power statewide as the storm blew through last week.

To mitigate flooding, 90% of the community is built on preserved wetlands which naturally collect excess rainwater.

This helps ensure floodwaters won’t encroach as the town balloons in size to its planned 19,500 homes.

Opening to residents in 2018, the community about the size of Manhattan saw little more than a few downed trees and traffic lights during Hurricane Milton, and even took in around 2,000 Floridians seeking shelter.

“When Governor DeSantis made the announcement that Babcock Ranch was open we saw a very big surge in evacuees,” Syd Kitson, a former NFL player and co-founder of the town told the New York Times.

“It saved a lot of lives in some really dangerous areas.”

During the storm, the town sheltered about 400 people in its K-12 school and another 1,600 in its 40,000-square-foot sports facility.

Babcock Ranch showed off its storm-hardened infrastructure during Hurricane Ian in 2022, weathering the Category 4 storm with minimal damage, even as neighboring communities were battered to the tune of $115 billion in losses, the outlet said.

“Mother Nature is going to rule every time,” Kitson said. “But what we try to do is mitigate as much of that risk as possible and make our community as resilient as we can.”

Homes in the community — which boasts two schools, numerous parks and around six million square feet of commercial space — run from just under $300,000 to over $4 million.

Kitson said the town is scheduled to be completed sometime in 2035.