Originally posted on my personal Facebook 10/10/19 (the one year anniversary of Hurricane Michael). Someone recently asked me for a copy of this old post because they wanted to share it with a friend who had just gone through Hurricane Ian. So, while I’m shaking the dust/rust off my tech skills and joining the world of blogging (late to the party I know) I decided to go ahead and put it out there in the hopes that it might help someone. I know, I know, a bummer of a post considering my usual Instagram shares … it brought me down to revisit the topic too … but I truly do hope it helps someone navigate their post natural disaster experience.

Roots of a tree toppled by Hurricane Michael still visible during a local December holiday event.
  • Know your neighbors, you and they will be ALL YOU’VE GOT in the aftermath (when Emergency Services & National Guard aren’t able to get to you).  We evacuated but I am ever so grateful for my parent’s little corner in Lynn Haven. 
  • Whether you believe in gun rights (and you all know I’m a softie bleeding heart on most issues) or not, know this … after a natural disaster, it is a FIGHT for survival.  People will SHOOT you to steal your generator and other supplies.  Law enforcement will NOT be there to protect you.  It was 3 to 4 days AFTER Hurricane Michael hit before some residential areas saw ANYONE from any emergency services. Not because they didn’t care but because massive trees were blocking the roads, as well as live electrical wires. Rural areas had a much longer wait. Have your weapons and ammunition ready and never let your guard down.
  • Chain down your generator. Someone may attempt to steal it in the middle of the night and you want them to make a racket when they attempt to.
  • Be prepared to be without power for weeks to months.  When the entire power grid is damaged fixing it takes time, even with the AMAZING linemen who poured in from all over the nation – THANK YOU AGAIN!
  • BUCKETS … when there is no power, there is no water treatment plant running, when that is offline, your sewer system is offline … be prepared to dig a bathroom trench in your yard for day time and have buckets ready for night time.  Yes, for a time you CAN flush toilets with buckets of water, but if the sewer system isn’t operating there will come a time that it can’t hold anything more. 
  • Cash is KING.  No power means no ATM access.  No power also means any stores/gas stations that may be open can’t process credit card payments.  Make sure to have cash on hand if a hurricane is heading your way!
  • Have some cans of Fix-a-Flat in your vehicle at all times … debris everywhere means more nails in tires…and even once cleanup is over and rebuilding has started, construction all over the place also means more nails on the roads. 
  • Your insurance company is NOT your friend. They have not written and provided you with a guidebook because some of them prefer to take advantage of your fear, uncertainty and trauma, and hope you make a misstep along the way that allows them to not pay out.  They refuse to approve a structural engineer? Hire one anyway if you can afford to and pay out of pocket…an INDEPENDENT one that they have no control over.  That said, be courteous, give them a chance.  Only when they illustrate sheer incompetence and are incredulous to find out (after you’ve told them a zillion times AND the field adjusters report has already been submitted) that you are homeless (when they ask you if you have power to your home that you haven’t slept in in 6 weeks) should you talk to them like they are a dunderhead.  Oh, and never cuss on the line with them, you don’t want to give them a legitimate reason to terminate the call.
  • You WILL most likely be dealing with a 3rd party claims processing company.  Shocking right? After all, you researched your insurance company and went with a company that you thought was going to take care of you if anything happened.  But insurance companies aren’t staffed to that level at all times, and they can’t handle the load when a natural disaster strikes … oh, and calling and asking to speak directly to them … it WON’T happen.  Once the 3rd party company has your claim, your calls, even to your insurance company’s 1-800 # will be routed to that claims processor. 
  • There are 3 different types of adjusters: your Field Adjuster (usually assigned by your insurance company to come out and assess your damage, generally independent or working for a contracted company), your Desk Adjuster (sitting at a desk with a folder never once seeing your home in person) and some will hire a Public Adjuster, who will handle your claim and represent only you in return for 10% of your payout.
  • Get this, your Field Adjuster may have been a Pig Farmer just 24 hours prior! Yes, you read that right … your field adjuster has taken some course and passed a test (at least I think that’s the way it works) but they may have NO EXPERTISE in the construction industry.  In a massive natural disaster, the task of assessing is so overwhelming, they’ll send just about anyone to estimate your damages.  Thankful and grateful that we ended up with an experienced field adjuster who builds custom homes for a living – he is the one that told us horror stories about how unlucky many would be re: their field adjuster.
  • Take notes EVERY SINGLE TIME you speak to your Desk Adjuster.  Or advise them you are putting them on speaker and record the conversation.  They may give you an email address to send documentation to but I assure you, at least as happened in our case, they will NOT reply and put anything in writing.  And that leads me to this, your Desk Adjuster may just disappear on you and then after weeks of no contact, you may find that why yes, you HAVE been assigned a new desk adjuster, they are just too overwhelmed to make contact with you! I know folks with simple claims that ended up with 9 desk adjusters in the first few weeks as they added to staff and claims were divvied up again and again.
  • Check your ALE Coverage (Additional Living Expenses) on your insurance, make sure that it is adequate…but remember that adequate is a relative term because after a large scale natural disaster, the amount of available living accommodations is greatly reduced, thus creating a Supply & Demand situation.  That 800 sq ft house that you could’ve rented pre-hurricane for $750 will now cost you $2000. Need to spend a month in a hotel because you can’t find a place to live? $3500 right there out of your ALE. SAVINGS – and I can’t stress this enough … what if you can’t EVER stay in your home another night? You’ll most likely have to hop locations simply to have a place to lay your head at night. Think FEMA has you covered? Well first you have to realize that even though they will come in eventually and secure temporary lodging for many, you have to look at the # of people displaced and the amount of available lodging. Insured and have ALE coverage? ALE is an “incurred expense” in your insurance “contract” – thus they don’t HAVE to pay it out until after you have spent the $.  Reimbursement timeframe? Well, let’s just say that by the time we were totaled out 3 months after the storm, we had NEVER received our first ALE payout.  Can you afford paying both a mortgage AND rent on a place to live while awaiting your first emergency payment? Keep a written log of every extra expenditure that you incur, along with receipts.  You’ll need these to get reimbursed.
  • PETS – let me add pets to the above equation of looking for a temporary place to live … do you have a slew of pets? Large dogs? Breeds considered undesirable? All things you have to consider when you can never spend another night in your own home. Also, let’s dispel the misconception that ALL hotels must allow you to make a reservation with pets due to a State of Emergency having been declared … it’s a MYTH … not true at all.  Make sure you know what hotel chains do have pet friendly policies. 
  • Video tape your entire home either before evacuating or before the storm hits. This makes it so much easier to file a Contents Claim after. Make sure you upload it into the cloud. Keep documentation for the higher priced items in your home.  By documentation, I mean an online backup, because post storm, you may not have a single piece of paper left in your home. 
  • CELL PHONES – Have burner cell phones from multiple carriers, have them ACTIVATED and ready to use.  Verizon is the biggest carrier in the Florida panhandle and their performance was ABYSMAL.  Yes, they lost all of their towers because it was a Cat 5, and that was out of their hands, but post-storm AT&T brought in portable towers and drones immediately.  T-Mobile also stayed up in many areas. 
  • FEMA is NOT going to take care of you immediately after a natural disaster.  In actuality they may not take care of you at all.  The majority of their mission is AFTER the initial destruction and aftermath.  They hire anyone and everyone to do initial surveying.  These people travel in, may barely speak English, have never worked a natural disaster before and may very well write down that your home is livable when it is COVERED IN MOLD (yes, these things happened). 
  • Never sign an AOB (assignment of benefits) – there is an entire storm chasing industry that will arrive post-disaster.  They will play on your emotions.  Have trees laying on your roof? Afraid of more damage? No worries, they’ll offer to remove them for $ amounts that will make those of you not in hurricane damaged areas gasp.  You name it, they are there, sure they are ready and available to get a tarp on your home … for $10,000 (yes, that is the quote we received Thanksgiving morning 2018 to seal off our home before we knew it was going to be a Total Loss).  The initial tarp company that our insurance company sent out just threw a loose tarp over half of our roof and didn’t secure it … yes, they still got paid because they had a contract with our insurance company. We arrived 30 minutes after they were there (remember we had to drive from our temporary living location and they couldn’t tell us when they would get to our damaged home) and they had left garbage, the plastic wrappers from the tarps, all over our roof. 
  • Consult with your local Building Code office before commencing with ANYTHING. Had we paid for the $10,000 tarp job, had we allowed a mitigation company to start tearing out our walls … all of that would’ve been subtracted from our final payout. Thankfully when we finally found out that our house had to come down we hadn’t parted with any of that $. 
  • The FEMA 50% Rule – know it, understand it, follow it … if the total of repairs/improvements is equal to or greater than 50% of the market value of your structure then your structure MUST be brought into compliance with current flood/building codes. In our case this meant having to raise our home 6 feet in order to rebuild. Again, a huge relief that we learned this BEFORE parting with $ to begin repairs.
  • Just assumed you’d always rebuild? Well, insurance amounts are for what rebuilding your home would cost IF perhaps you were the only home in your area hit by tragedy, say a fire.  What they don’t take into account is that after a natural disaster, when the majority of homes in a geographical area have major damage, labor and supplies are limited and folks will wait 10 months JUST TO GET A ROOF.  The demand inflates the cost to rebuild and you’ll never get even close to the house that you lost. 
  • And now for some warm and fuzzies … hug those you love tight, before during and after. 
  • You will learn that people you have barely spoken to in 30 years will be a support network like no other.  Classmates that were in lesser hit areas were all over social media (they had to drive out to get a signal) offering to check on loved ones.  Some even went so far as to locate old classmates’ parents and cut them out of their homes.  I can’t even tell you the amazing human connections in those days following the storm.  Sometimes my hometown is annoyingly small townish but in those days following Hurriacane Michael, I have never been so grateful that so and so knew so and so, and yes they were alive. I found out my own parents were alive from a Facebook friend whose Grandparents lived next door to my parents (I didn’t know they were her Grandparents bc they had moved in after I left home).
  • You will also learn that some folks don’t care because it isn’t affecting them …and yes, when close friends spent that week posting college football memes and not once offering up an “Are you ok? I know you don’t know if your parents are alive.” they ended up in my discard pile … and I’m okay with that.
  • And Facebook, this platform that frustrates us, annoys us, and even causes us to unfriend people sometimes based on their endless political posts … well, I can tell you that after a natural disaster, I will NEVER delete my Facebook again.  From our evacuation spot in Georgia, I was able to connect people with one another, to find out loves ones were alive, to crowdsource a fundraiser and drive back into Bay County 5 days later with a UHaul trailer of supplies.  This platform was a resource like no other in the days following Hurricane Michael.  Thank YOU to all of you that were a part of that network. **Ok, so this ended up being false in the end, finally walked away from FB completely in June 2022, too much ugly for this heart**
  • And finally, you will learn that as long as you have 4 walls and a roof over your head … you will be just fine.  Material goods cease to have meaning … but those family pictures that you saved or lost mean EVERYTHING.  Digitize hardcopies NOW if you have them.  Don’t risk losing them forever.
  • I’ll just close with this… #STUPIDHURRICANE