Lifting a Town to Escape the Next Storm

Photo by Fred R. Conrad/ The New York Times

nytimes.com - by Peter Applebome - February 22, 2013

HIGHLANDS, N.J. — If not for the most deadly natural disaster in American history, in Texas, and an innovative response to it, more than a century ago, one might briskly consign the proposal to save this oft-flooded borough at the northern end of the Jersey Shore to the realm of pigs with wings.

But four months after Hurricane Sandy almost obliterated downtown Highlands, an unlikely idea with one enormous historical antecedent seems to be taking hold here: Don’t just raise the buildings. Raise the town.

After all, officials in the modest, largely working-class community note, something quite similar was done, with the most rudimentary technologies, to save Galveston, Tex., which was raised as much as 17 feet after more than 6,000 people perished in the great hurricane of 1900.

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