Storm Prep Nobody Does: The Insurance Half of the Checklist

By The NMH Agency Team, Licensed Agent

Every spring, the weather segments rerun the same storm-prep
checklist: batteries, water, tie down the patio furniture. All good
advice. But there’s a second checklist, the insurance half, that
determines how the months after the storm go, and almost nobody
runs it, because it isn’t dramatic and it can’t be done once the radar
turns red. Here it is, from people who see which claims go smoothly and
which become sagas.

Run it on a sunny weekend. It takes about an hour, most of which is
walking around your house with a phone.

1. Film everything you own
(20 minutes)

The single highest-value item on this list. Walk every room slowly
with your phone recording video: open the closets, open the drawers,
narrate brands where you know them, linger on electronics, tools,
jewelry, instruments, the garage, the shed, under the deck. Then walk
the exterior: every side of the house, the roof from the ground, fences,
outbuildings.

Why: after a major loss, you will be asked to inventory what you
lost, from memory, while displaced and stressed. It’s the hardest
paperwork moment in insurance, and a ten-minute video reduces it to a
transcription exercise. It also establishes pre-storm condition, which
defuses the “was that damage pre-existing?” conversation before it
starts. Store the video off-site: cloud storage, or email it to
yourself. A documentation video that burns with the house is a poem, not
a tool.

2. Find your real
deductibles (10 minutes)

Pull the declarations page and find every deductible, then convert
any percentages into dollars. In much of the country, wind, hail, or
hurricane damage carries its own deductible, often 1 to 5 percent of
your dwelling coverage, not a flat $1,000. On a $350,000 dwelling
limit, a 2% wind deductible is $7,000 of the roof repair that’s yours
before coverage starts. Knowing this number in May beats learning it in
a driveway full of shingles in August. If the number would genuinely
wreck you, this is the season to talk about restructuring, because
deductible options exist before storms and vanish during them.

3. Confront the flood gap (10
minutes)

Repeat the sentence every claims veteran knows by heart: no
homeowners, renters, or mobile home policy covers rising water.
Storm surge, overflowing creeks, sheet flooding from stalled rainstorms:
all excluded, everywhere, always. Flood coverage is a separate policy
(federal NFIP or private market), a large share of flood claims come
from outside mapped high-risk zones, and, critically, new flood
policies generally carry about a 30-day waiting period. That waiting
period is why this item is on the sunny-day checklist: when the named
storm appears on the ten-day forecast, the window has already closed.
Price it now, decide on purpose, even if the decision is no.

4. Stage your information (10
minutes)

Photograph your insurance cards and declarations pages. Note your
policy numbers, carrier claim phone numbers, and your agent’s number
(that’s us: 800.388.6780) in your phone’s notes and on a paper copy in
the go-bag with the flashlights. After regional storms, carrier phone
lines jam and websites crawl; people who can file immediately with
policy numbers in hand get adjusters scheduled days ahead of people
hunting for paperwork in a damaged house. Small edge, real edge.

While you’re in there: confirm your mortgage company listed on the
policy is your current servicer. Claim checks for major home
damage typically include the lender’s name, and stale lender info adds
weeks of endorsement friction exactly when you’re living in a hotel.

5. Do
the physical stuff that doubles as claim prevention (varies)

The weather-segment list, but with an insurance lens: trim branches
over the roof (falling limbs are the most common storm claim we see, and
“the tree was obviously dead” invites a maintenance argument); secure or
store anything that becomes a projectile; clean gutters so water goes
where designed; check that sump pump, and note that its failure mode is
covered by a cheap water backup endorsement most policies don’t
include by default; photograph the roof from the ground this season,
dated evidence of its pre-storm condition.

After the storm, in one
paragraph

Since you’ll want it eventually: safety first, then photograph damage
before touching anything, make reasonable temporary repairs (tarps,
boards) and keep receipts, report the claim fast, be present for the
adjuster, and be politely wary of out-of-town contractors knocking on
doors offering to “handle your insurance.” We’ve written the full claims
walkthrough separately; the storm-day summary is document, protect,
report, and call your agent, in that order.

An hour of prep, most of it filming your own house. It’s the least
dramatic storm preparation there is, and the odds are decent that some
season, it’ll be worth more than the generator.

Want us to check your wind deductible and flood exposure before
the season gets loud? Call 800.388.6780 or request a review. Ten
minutes now, calm later.