How to avoid hurricane damage...

I was reading a news article on Yahoo today, which I'd normally link to, but I can't FIND it again... every time you click on anything at Yahoo, the whole damn site reorganizes itself. But this isn't intended to be a gripe about Yahoo's short-attention-span page design.

The article was talking about how the increase in massive damage from hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc is not nature's fault, but rather the result of our own foolish building practices. According to the article, nature's wrath has not shown any significant increase in either the number or severity of incidents over the long term -- we've just insisted on packing more and more people (and their expensive, breakable possessions) along coastlines and tectonic faultlines.

According to some estimates, the most dangerous hurricane on record actually happened in 1929, but nobody much cared because nobody much lived in the strike area, and they didn't have nationwide broadcast of scary color-enhanced satellite images of what was going on out in the ocean.
Those who DID live there probably weren't living in $500K beach houses constructed largely of balsa wood and glass, or 30-story hotels built on unstable sand. The estimate said that if that same storm hit that same spot today, the damages would be roughly 50 percent worse than the tally for Katrina, simply because there are so many more people to kill and so much more expensive stuff to wreck.

This is why, every time one of my friends mentions looking for a house near the beach, my reaction is a variant of "WHAT ARE YOU, INSANE!!!???"
I'm trying very hard to find a place well away from the water while still staying within driving distance of work, and my friend (who spent six months living on a ship because her parents' house had been trashed by floodwater) is determined to live within walking distance of the beach.

I don't even LIKE beaches. What's the big fuss all about, anyway?