Getting a Savannah home ready for hurricane season

Before the season: the boring work that saves roofs

• Walk your roofline (or have someone do it) — lifted shingles, soft fascia, and clogged gutters are how wind-driven rain gets in.
• Trim back limbs over the roof, and take a hard look at any large tree with visible rot or a lean toward the house. Live oaks are tougher than pines — the pine leaning over your bedroom is the one to deal with.
• Know your insurance BEFORE you need it: wind and wind-driven rain typically fall under your homeowners policy, while rising water and storm surge are flood insurance — a separate policy most coastal homeowners should at least price out.
• Video-walk your home once a year, opening closets and panning slowly. Ten minutes of footage becomes gold if you ever file a claim.
• Look up your evacuation zone on Chatham Emergency Management's site (or your county's) now, while it's sunny.

72 hours out: when a storm has our name on it

• Bring in or anchor anything that can fly — patio furniture, grills, trampolines. In hurricane wind, yard objects become what breaks windows.
• Move irreplaceables and electronics up off floors — most Savannah storm losses are water at floor level, not wind taking the roof.
• Charge everything, fill vehicles, and refill prescriptions early.
• Photograph the house inside and out one more time — fresh "before" evidence, timestamped days ahead of the storm.
• If officials call an evacuation for your zone, go. Every restoration job is fixable; that decision is the one that matters.

After the storm: the first 48 hours

The dangerous part of a storm often comes after it. Treat every downed line as live, never run a generator indoors or in a garage (carbon monoxide kills quietly), and watch for weakened limbs still hanging overhead.

• Document all damage with photos and video before touching anything.
• Get breaches covered fast — tarping a roof opening and boarding broken windows is "mitigation," and your policy expects it. You don't need to wait for an adjuster to prevent further damage.
• Report your claim promptly, and keep receipts for every emergency expense — tarps, board-up, hotel nights are often reimbursable.
• Be careful with door-knockers after a storm. Get any offer in writing, be slow to sign anything that assigns your insurance benefits to a contractor, and prefer companies you can call back next month.

Why speed matters more here than most coasts

A breached roof in Arizona is a hole; a breached roof in Savannah is a mold timeline. Our humidity means storm water inside walls starts growing something within days. That's why the emergency sequence — tarp, extract, dry, then repair — matters more than cosmetic fixes. Drying the structure properly is the difference between a storm you repaired and a storm you'll be re-repairing next spring.