Storm playbook
After a Hurricane: The First 72 Hours for Your Roof
The window between the storm passing and the next system arriving is short. Here's the order of operations that keeps your roof — and your claim — intact.
The first 72 hours after a hurricane decide more than most homeowners realize. Not whether you call us. Whether your insurance carrier pays the claim you actually need them to pay, whether the next squall ruins what is left of your ceiling, and whether you end up with a Pennsylvania license plate in your driveway making promises that will not hold.
This is the playbook we hand homeowners in Daphne, Foley, Fairhope, and Gulf Shores when the wind dies down. It is the same order of operations Justin walks himself through on his own roof. Work it top to bottom.
Hours 0 to 2: Safety, then nothing else
Stay inside until the wind drops below 25 mph for at least 30 minutes. Tropical systems pull back, then return. Hurricane Sally sat over Baldwin County for hours doing exactly that. The roof can wait. You cannot replace yourself.
Once it is safe to move:
- Check for gas smells before flipping any switches. Storms break gas lines.
- Check the breaker panel. If it is wet or warm, leave it off and call the power company before you call anyone else.
- Walk through the house slowly, looking up. Ceiling stains, drips, bulges in drywall, and the smell of wet insulation all tell you something punched through the roof.
- Do not step on a wet ceiling or stand under a sagging one. A fifty-gallon water bubble in drywall weighs four hundred pounds when it lets go.
Do not climb the roof yourself.
More Gulf Coast homeowners get hurt on their own roofs in the 48 hours after a storm than in any other window of the year. Shingles you walked on yesterday are slick, loose, or hiding holes today. Photograph from the ground or with a drone. We will do the up-close inspection for free.
Hours 2 to 24: Document everything
Insurance claims live or die on documentation, and the carrier wants to see condition as close to the storm as possible. Wait three days and they will argue half the damage came from the next rain.
What to photograph
- Every elevation of the house from the ground (north, south, east, west), so the date stamp on the metadata proves storm-period condition.
- Any visible roof damage from ground level: missing shingles, lifted tabs, exposed underlayment, debris on the roof.
- All four sides of every detached structure (shed, garage, carport).
- Yard debris that came off the roof: granules, shingle pieces, ridge cap fragments, vent boots.
- Inside the attic if you can safely access it: water staining, daylight showing through the deck, wet insulation, displaced soffit baffles.
- Every interior water stain, ceiling drip, or wet wall, with a tape measure or coin in the frame for scale.
Use your phone. Phones tag location and time automatically, and that metadata is exactly what an adjuster needs. Do not crop, edit, or filter. Originals only.
Save the receipts
Anything you spend in the first 72 hours to prevent further damage is reimbursable under almost every homeowner policy. Tarps, sandbags, plywood, the guy down the street who helped you board a window. Keep every receipt and write the date on it.
Day 1 to 2: Tarp, then file
Get a tarp on it
If water is actively coming in, a tarp is the most important call you make this week. A properly installed emergency tarp buys you the four to eight weeks before a permanent repair and stops the damage from compounding while the adjuster slow-walks the claim.
We do same-day tarping across Baldwin and Mobile counties. So do most local roofers. Call before you call insurance. Getting it dry matters more than getting it filed in the first 24 hours.
File the claim
Once the house is dry, call your insurance carrier claims line. The number is on the front of your declarations page and on the back of your insurance card. Have these ready:
- Your policy number.
- The date and approximate time of the storm event.
- A short, factual description: "Hurricane [name] passed over my house on [date]. I have missing shingles on the south slope and active leaks in two interior rooms."
- Your photos, ready to upload to the adjuster portal they will send you.
What not to say on that first call.
Do not speculate about cause, age of the roof, or whether you think the damage is bad enough to be "worth" a claim. Stick to what you can see. Carriers record every call, and a stray sentence like "I think the roof was already due" becomes a denial reason three weeks later.
Day 2 to 3: The first inspection
By now your phone is ringing every 20 minutes. Some calls are real, most are not. Here is how to triage.
Who to let on the roof
A local roofer doing a free post-storm inspection is fine. So is a consumer-side insurance attorney you have retained. (Alabama, unlike Florida, does not license public adjusters, so anyone in Alabama claiming that title is operating in a gray area — be cautious.) Storm chasers in unmarked trucks are not fine. Storm chasers wearing branded shirts from a company you have never heard of are not fine. If you would not have called them yesterday, do not let them on the roof today.
Ask three questions before anyone gets on a ladder:
- How long has your company been registered in Baldwin or Mobile County? Check the secretary of state online registry on your phone while they answer.
- What is your Alabama HBLB roofing license number? Real ones know it cold. Storm chasers will hand you a homeowner-builder number, which is not a roofing license.
- Will you stay through the claim process, or are you here for the storm? Real roofers will tell you their next ten jobs are already booked. Storm chasers will tell you whatever you want to hear.
If the answer to any of these is vague, end the conversation and close the door.
Schedule the adjuster
Your insurance carrier will send a field adjuster, usually within 7 to 14 days for a named storm. When you schedule the visit, ask whether your roofer can be present. Most carriers say yes, and a roofer at the adjuster meeting will catch line items the adjuster misses. It happens on every claim.
What not to do in the first 72 hours
- Do not sign anything. Not an "inspection authorization," not an "assignment of benefits," not a contingent contract that says "if insurance approves we get the work." These get used to lock you in before you have talked to anyone real.
- Do not accept a free roof from anyone. Under Ala. Code § 27-12A-2, knowingly waiving, rebating, or inflating an estimate to absorb your insurance deductible is insurance fraud — and both the contractor and the homeowner can be charged. Losses over $1,000 are a Class B felony.
- Do not pay any deposit before the adjuster has been on the roof. No legitimate local roofer asks for a deposit before the scope is approved.
- Do not make permanent repairs before the adjuster sees the damage. Tarps yes. New shingles no. The adjuster needs to see what failed.
Where Optimum fits
We have been working Baldwin and Mobile counties for 15+ years. After every named system, from Sally to Ida to the unnamed squalls that pop up between June and November, we are the people the same neighborhoods keep calling. Justin owns the company. Jon Jon picks up the phone. The truck has Alabama plates because the truck has always had Alabama plates.
If you want eyes on your roof in the next 24 hours, call. Free inspection, written scope, photos you can hand to your adjuster, no pressure either way.
Common questions
Questions about this topic
- Most Alabama homeowner policies require you to report the loss "promptly" or within a stated number of days, often 60 or 180. Look at the conditions section of your declarations page. In practice: file within the first seven days. The longer you wait, the harder it is to prove the damage came from the named storm and not later weather.
- Named-storm claims are coded differently than other claims, and carriers in coastal Alabama generally cannot single-rate you for filing one. Across the broader pool, premiums in Baldwin and Mobile counties rise after major storm seasons regardless of whether you personally filed. Not filing a legitimate claim does not save you money. It just costs you a roof.
- Not for the first call. File the claim first so the date of loss is on record. Get one trustworthy roofer to do an inspection and document the scope. After the adjuster visits, then it makes sense to get a second roofer opinion if the scope looks thin.
- It still gets covered if the damage is storm-caused. Some carriers will pay actual cash value (depreciated) rather than replacement cost on an old roof, which is a real cost difference. Read the "roof surfacing endorsement" section of your policy. That is where this lives. If you do not have a copy, request one in writing — Ala. Code § 27-14-6 gives the insurer 30 days to furnish your application after written demand, and policy copies are routinely produced on the same request.
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