Storm preparation
What to Do Before a Hurricane If You Live Out of State
3 minute read
A named storm gives you seventy-two hours, and most of that window is unusable from another state. Here is what to settle in May so the storm week is a phone call rather than a scramble.
Every June, a version of the same conversation happens in a hundred coastal Florida driveways. An owner has flown in on short notice, the shutter installer is three days out, the panels for the lanai are missing two clips nobody can find, and the forecast track has moved forty miles west overnight.
None of that is a storm problem. All of it is a May problem that was not handled in May.
If your property is on the Volusia coast and you spend hurricane season somewhere else, the useful work is almost entirely front-loaded. Here is what that work is.
Settle physical access before you need it
Decide who can be inside your house at four in the afternoon on a Tuesday with a warning posted, and write it down. Not "my neighbor has a key" — a named person, with a key or code that is documented, and an understanding of what they are authorized to do without reaching you.
If that person is a neighbor, ask yourself honestly whether you would be comfortable asking them to install eleven aluminum panels in thirty knots of wind. Most people would not, which is why so many houses go into a storm half prepared.
Verify the protection you already own actually fits
This is the single most common failure, and it is entirely preventable.
Shutters and panels are stored for eleven months a year. Clips corrode. Wing nuts vanish. Panels get restacked in an order nobody recorded. Track hardware seizes. Accordion shutters that were serviced two seasons ago bind halfway.
The fix is unglamorous: take every panel out in May, fit it to its opening, label it to that opening, replace the missing hardware, and put it back in a documented order. Run the accordions and the roll-downs through a full cycle under power and by hand crank. Do it once, in daylight, in no wind.
Run the generator under load
A generator that starts is not a generator that works. Start it, put it under actual load for thirty minutes, and confirm the transfer switch behaves. Confirm the fuel is current — gasoline degrades, and diesel grows things. Confirm you know where the fuel will come from when every station within twenty miles is dry.
Get the tree work done in spring
Limbs within striking distance of the roof, the lanai, or the service drop are a spring project. In August, every tree crew in the county is booked, and after a storm they are booked for a month.
Make the record before the storm, not after
This is the item almost nobody has, and it is the one that matters most to the outcome you actually care about — the claim.
Insurers settle cleanly when they can see the property's condition immediately before the event and immediately after it. Dated photographs of a secured house: roof, elevations, openings, interiors, the contents of the garage, the dock and lift. Nobody wants to do this, and the owners who have it are the ones who are not arguing in February.
Confirm what your policy actually requires
Two questions, answered before June:
- What is your hurricane deductible, in dollars rather than percent?
- Does your policy impose any requirement on a property left unoccupied — a documented inspection interval, a water shutoff, a monitored alarm?
The second question surprises people. A growing number of carriers writing coastal risk now attach conditions to vacancy, and a claim is a poor moment to discover you were not meeting one.
Decide your instruction now
Write down, in advance: whether utilities are shut off and in what order, whether the pool is lowered, what gets moved off floor level, who is authorized to spend money on your behalf and up to what amount, and how you want to be reached when cell service is intermittent.
The value of deciding this in May is that in September, nobody has to reach you to ask.
The honest summary
You cannot manage a hurricane from another state. You can, however, arrive at June with a house that is already ready, a documented record of its condition, a named person authorized to act, and a written instruction that does not require your phone to work.
That is the whole job, and it is a spring job.