When Hurricane Hugo smacked into the South Carolina coast and trudged inland in 1989, the storm caused billions of dollars in economic loss to a state where many communities had no building standards.

Even in areas where building codes required structures to withstand hurricane winds, rules weren't always enforced before Hugo, said Timothy Reinhold, vice president of engineering at the Institute for Business and Home Safety.

The Palmetto State now is better prepared for a storm following a 1997 law mandating the International Building Codes for all 46 counties, experts say. Rules vary in strength with a community's distance from the coast.

But while South Carolina is heading in the right direction, the state shouldn't rest too easy, said Reinhold, a former Clemson University engineering professor who has studied coastal homes. Only newer structures built or significantly renovated since codes were adopted and enforced are designed to withstand hurricane gusts up to 130 mph.

"There's still an awful lot of old homes that aren't built to the new codes," Reinhold said. "So if we have a big storm that comes in in a little bit different place, it's almost like a Darwin system. You get rid of the weak."

Myrtle Beach wasn't hit as hard by Hugo as the Charleston area, Reinhold said, so the Grand Strand would be more vulnerable to another storm.

Federal aid and insurance claims would flow in after a storm, of course. But if homes and businesses can withstand damage in the first place, people can return more quickly to a normal quality of life, Reinhold said.

That might help prevent the displacement and civil unrest that spread through New Orleans and cities nearby as refugees fled the damage of Hurricane Katrina with nothing to call their own.

And it would help keep South Carolina's economy, heavily dependent on coastal tourism, from flagging, Reinhold said.

There's still hope for the older structures, though. Reinhold said if homeowners upgrade their roofs when replacing them and prepare plywood to seal windows, they're doing 75 percent of what's most important to protect them.

New construction is probably better prepared for wind and flying debris, but there's much more -- and more valuable -- construction on the coast than in 1989, said Allison Dean Love, executive director of the S.C. Insurance News Service. That increases the state's risk for overall damage and loss.

For an indicator, the Grand Strand's Horry County issued 9,653 new building permits just last year, a 20 percent increase over permits issued there the year before, according to the county.

Population grew 51 percent in Horry County between 1990 and 2004, from 144,053 to 217,608 in 2005, census data show. In Charleston County, population grew 10 percent, from 295,039 to 326,762.

The state's rapid coastal growth and its dependence on tourism leads David Prevatt, professor of civil engineering at Clemson University, to question whether cities and communities are taking the threat of a hurricane seriously enough.

Prevatt said coastal communities should study their buildings -- particularly hospitals, police stations and other important first-response structures -- to determine what kind of winds they could withstand and how long it would take to put them back together. That might lead communities to beef up the engineering on some important buildings, he said.

Another consideration is limiting the size of vulnerable communities, Prevatt suggests.

"Perhaps the horse has bolted long ago and we are stuck with some mega-communities," Prevatt said. "But in other places where we have less population densities, should we keep increasing those populations? We need to make tradeoffs if we are actually going to have a million people living on the coast."

Even after Hugo, it took the state until 1997 to adopt statewide building codes, Reinhold said.

"It takes a long time for political will to build up to actually make a change," he said. "People tend to not want to be regulated, to be told what they have to do on their own property."

The state took another step forward by training building officials statewide on the new codes, Reinhold said. That's led to better enforcement, which is key to making rules worthwhile.

"I'm sure there are still some places where the good-old-boy system is still working," he said. "But I think there have been real efforts and real strides."

Some South Carolina cities and counties have had strong building codes and enforcement programs for years, Reinhold said. And some have improved building codes after nearly every hurricane, making new structures there more durable as time goes on, said Arthur Cummings, building codes director for Beaufort County.

"After each hurricane, what usually happens is there is a team of experts, engineers, building officials, different people from the industry, that will study some of the damage to determine what can be done and what worked and what failed," Cummings said.

"A lot of the lessons that we learned from these hurricanes have been incorporated into the code."

For example, recent rule changes mandated stronger glass windows near the coast, glass that can withstand higher wind speeds and flying debris.

Experience has shown that if a building doesn't have holes -- holes made when windows or doors break -- it is more likely to withstand the storm, Cummings said.

Another recent rule requires homes near the ocean to have pilings driven 20 to 40 feet into the ground instead of resting atop concrete, Cummings said.

But even with the latest technology, no home is invincible. Building standards are meant to help structures survive Category 3 or 4 hurricanes, Cummings said.