Protect Your Home During the Next Hurricane

Hurricane season has arrived again, and anxious homeowners along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts are once again preparing for disaster.  Last year's hurricane season was a record-breaker, with so many hurricanes that meteorologists exhausted the list of hurricane names, and had to resort to using the Greek alphabet to identify storms.  Will this season be any different?

In general, conditions this year appear very similar to last year, meaning we could see another very active season.  So what does this mean for the average homeowner?  How can we prepare for a very dangerous season?

The simplest way to prepare for hurricane season is, quite simply, to prepare.  Every time a hurricane approaches, we see images on the news of panicked residents tearing through grocery, hardware, and discount stores looking for batteries, bottled water, flashlights, and food.  In a disaster, minutes and seconds count, and these people are wasting hours looking for items they could have had on hand earlier.  Don't be one of those people.  If you don't have to fight your way through these crowds, you can spend time preparing your home for the storm.

There are basically two ways to think about protecting your home. The first is keeping water, wind, and debris from entering your home.  The second is protecting your possessions if water does enter your home.

We're all familiar with the procedures for keeping water and wind out: boarding up windows, stacking sandbags around the house, and so on.  We see footage on TV of homeowners taking these precautions almost as often as the footage of people charging through the stores looking for supplies.  Certainly, these protective measures are a good idea, but many homeowners finish them and leave, without considering how to protect the interior of their home.