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Saffir Set Up Scale For Rating Storms

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By JESSICA GRESKO, The Associated Press

Published: November 24, 2007

MIAMI - Herbert Saffir, an engineer who created the five-category system used to describe hurricane strength and warn millions of an approaching storm's danger, has died. He was 90.

Saffir died Wednesday from complications of surgery, said his son, Richard Saffir.

A structural engineer, Saffir created his scale in 1969, laying out for the first time the kind of damage that could be expected from an approaching hurricane. It has since become the definitive way to describe intensity for storms that form in the Atlantic and parts of the Pacific. Before the scale, hurricanes were simply described as major or minor.

Saffir's innovation was ranking storm destruction by type, from Category 1, in which trees and unanchored mobile homes receive the primary damage, to Category 5, which causes the complete failure of roofs and some structures. The five descriptions of destruction then were matched with the sustained wind speeds producing the corresponding damage.

Saffir's scale was expanded by former National Hurricane Center Director Robert H. Simpson and became known as the Saffir-Simpson scale in the 1970s. The scale is now so well known that many coastal residents toss off shorthand like "Cat. 1," and few need to be told that it refers to Saffir and Simpson's creation.

Simpson said the system helped him communicate the power of an approaching storm.

"We had a lot of requests before the scale: How many resources of what kind would be needed to deal with the storm," Simpson said. "I couldn't tell The Salvation Army, for example, how much and what materials they should be shipping. The scale gave them a much better handle on that."

Simpson added possible storm surge heights for each category, and the hurricane center staff made a small adjustment to the scale's wind speeds. Simpson, 95, now lives in Washington.

Saffir was born in New York in 1917. He graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in civil engineering in 1940 and then served in World War II, later moving to South Florida to become a county engineer.

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