Storms are brewing. Spring has always been the season for severe weather, but the next few months may be worse than normal. For the first time on record, the average sea surface temperature in the Gulf of Mexico never fell below 73 degrees during the last winter, according to an article from ArsTechnica.com. And so if you live in the South or the Plains, particularly, you may soon see your shingles fly off the roof or your backyard patio furniture sail past your window.
If you don’t want storms to ruin you financially, you’ll want to make sure your house is storm-proofed. And as you’ve likely guessed, a lot of your planning should revolve around your insurance company.
Before a storm. The first thing you’ll want to do is review your homeowner’s insurance policy.
Hopefully you don’t have a policy that’s too skimpy on coverage, says Jeramy Sibley, a franchise coordinator with Rainbow International, a water, flood and fire restorations service company headquartered in Waco, Texas with locations throughout North America.
“A policy may be cheaper today but could cost significantly more in the event of a loss if there is no coverage or inadequate coverage,” Sibley says. “A common item that people think is covered but isn’t is damage from water in two forms: rising water and damage from a slow leak.”
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Because a flood involves rising water, you often will find that you aren’t covered. You may need to get a separate policy or find flood insurance through a state or national program, Sibley says. But if your water damage comes because the storm put a hole in your roof or destroyed your windows, you probably are covered, he adds.
In any case, review the policy. If you bought the policy years ago, when you had fewer assets to protect and a smaller paycheck, you may realize you’d like to upgrade your coverage.
After that, take a tour of your home. There’s plenty you can do to prepare your house for a storm. You could clean out gutters (clogged gutters can lead to basement flood and water coming through the ceilings), chop down dead trees that seem poised to someday fall onto your house and make sure the backyard trampoline is secure (those tend to be the first to go in a serious windstorm).
If a storm is imminent, you could board up your windows with plywood, but plywood is heavy and only good for one use, says Bob Tankel, who owns the Tankel Law Group, which has represented condominium and homeowner associations throughout Florida since 1982. Tankel has a lot of experience dealing with homes and storms, especially having been through a few hurricanes himself.
After four major storms in 2004, Tankel says he bought corrugated Miami-Dade County-approved plastic covers for the windows and sliding doors.
“Unlike plywood, they’re translucent, so it’s not like living in a cave,” Tankel says.
It wasn’t cheap. Tankel spent $3,500 on the covers.
Then three years ago, he says, he bought impact-resistant Miami-Dade County-approved doors and windows throughout the home. Also not cheap: $48,000.
He also remodeled his house and now has a safe room with as much reinforcing steel in a 10-by-20-foot room than in the rest of the home.
Tankel isn’t sure what he spent on that — it was part of a larger home improvement project. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency website says that a small, 10-square-foot residential prefabricated safe room may cost as a little as $3,000 — and obviously, the bigger and more elaborate your safe room, the costs will only go up. But don’t expect the safe room to lower your insurance premiums.
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During a storm. Ideally, wherever you ride out the storm, you should have some supplies.
“Have things like water, flashlights, blankets, extra batteries and an external cellphone charger. You never know how long you will be in the room,” says Joe DeLuca, an account executive at Holmes Murphy & Associates, an insurance company headquartered in West Des Moines, Iowa.
He points out that if you have a TV or radio in that spot, the power may go out.
“The safe play would be to download your local television station’s weather alert application to your phone,” DeLuca says. “Oftentimes, they will be streaming weather updates and this will give you the play-by-play of the storm.”
After a storm. Don’t rush into the cleanup phase. There are far too many tragic tales that wind up in the news of people who wind up outside their home in the dark and then step on fallen power lines.
Assuming you bring in professionals to help you clean up, be cautious here, as well, says Sean Scott, a general building contractor based out of San Diego and the author of “The Red Guide to Recovery: Resource Handbook for Disaster Survivors.”
“The costs of water damage restoration and structural drying can be very expensive,” Scott says.
“In some cases, restoration companies have charged more for their labor and drying equipment than what it would have cost to simply remove and replace the damaged materials,” Scott warns. “Don’t be pressured into signing a contract with a restoration company without knowing how much the entire drying process will cost.”
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One reason you need to be careful is that your insurance company is only going to give you so much to repair or replace damage, Scott points out.
“If you allow a restoration company to spend too much on drying, you may not have enough coverage left to repair or replace what was damaged,” he says. “Worse yet, if a restoration company gouges you or charges you more than what is fair and reasonable, your insurance company may not be obligated to pay for all the charges.”
And you want to be thinking about the aftermath in other ways, in case your community was as roughed up as your house. Tankel says he keeps handguns and ammunition on hand — just in case.
“The zombie apocalypse will occur four days later without electricity,” he says.
He is joking (we think), but having been through some serious storms, Tankel says if there’s time before the unpleasant weather rolls in, you’ll want to fill your car with gas and have a stash of cash and pocket change on hand.
“ATMs don’t work when there’s no electricity. Neither do cash registers,” he says.
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Your Insurance Guide to Storms originally appeared on usnews.com
