OCALA, Fla. -- Hurricane Charley tore up hundreds of homes and buildings across Central Florida, and some people are calling for stricter building codes.

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Strict New Codes May Have Saved Buildings During Storm

But a team of scientists who studied the damage said new codes put in place after Hurricane Andrew may have already worked, WESH NewsChannel 2 reported.

Dale Hannon fled her southwest Florida home before Hurricane Charley hit, and when she returned, she found 2 inches of water on her floor and an empty space where her roof used to be.

"First thing I'm going to do is I'll try to salvage what I can from here, and then find a place to live," she said.

Engineers from all over the country, including the University of Florida, spent a week in southwest Florida studying homes like Hannon's. They photographed houses and collected data about the damage.

"We would fill out one form per house and record the location, the GPS, the address, and then spent a half-an-hour to an hour with a home and detail every piece of damage that occurred," said University of Florida structural engineer Kurtis Gurley.

He said their results are preliminary, but it appears that new, stricter building codes for both mobile homes and site-built homes worked.

"A lot of the damage that occurred to the newer standard manufactured homes was significantly less," he said.

Gurley said that site-built homes that were constructed under the old standards performed significantly worse.

Scientists from UF, Clemson and the Institute for Business and Home Safety have been studying the effects of wind-blown debris and other buildings since Andrew hit Florida 12 years ago.

They've been criticized for pushing for stricter, statewide building codes, but the results from Charley suggest the scientist may be correct.

They also said that the new codes may have saved lives as well as property because it appears some people actually rode the storm out in their newly manufactured homes. Experts, however, said they do not recommend that under any circumstances.