If your Florida home was severely damaged by Hurricane Irma to the extent that it is uninhabitable to live in, your insurance policy may provide a coverage called “Additional Living Expense” or “A.L.E.” if it is a covered loss. Under the Additional Living Expense coverage, you and your family may be entitled to rent another home of the same size, like kind and quality as well as be reimbursed for any extra expenses you incur such as food and temporary lodging.

Due to the widespread and extensive wind damage caused by Hurricane Irma, one thing we are seeing is that in their rush to get damages assessed, both insurance company adjusters and many inexperienced contractors are eyeballing roof damage and recommending partial repairs based on simple visual inspection. And I don’t want to even address those trying to inspect roofs with drones. This is going to cause terrible problems in the future as flying debris can damage the membrane of roofs and set people up for severe water damage in the future. Adjusters simply are not spending enough time assessing policyholder’s damage or taking into affect the increased cost of materials and repairs given the state of conditions. When the adjuster comes calling, please make sure inspectors physically get onto the roof and inspect for damage. While your roof may not look damaged, a closer inspection might reveal that it needs replacing rather than patching.

Various media outlets have been publishing articles (Florida is Short on Insurance Adjusters) (Hurricane Irma & Harvey causing Adjuster Shortage) on the shortage of insurance adjusters to handle the volume of claims that are being reported to both the government (FEMA) and the private sector insurance carriers. For those of us in the business we knew this was coming. It was only a matter of time. 

Hurricane Irma has caused widespread wind, water, roof and flood damage throughout Florida. As clean-up begins, attention will turn to insurance property claims and many residential and commercial policyholders will submit an insurance claim for storm damage to their property. The public adjusters at Tutwiler & Associates urge policyholders to take the proper steps to protect their property insurance claim and avoid settlement problems with the following 11 tips.
 
1. Notify your insurance carrier of your damage as soon as possible to expedite your claim. Do not go back into your home or mitigate damage until you know it’s safe to do so. If returning to your home after a power outage, do not turn on the power right away, especially if your home has been flooded. Have an electrician check the dwelling first to ensure it is safe.

There is no escaping the property damage that Hurricane Irma will cause to some parts of Florida. This type of storm can throw off tornado activity and pockets of heavy wind gusts. As a result, thousands of homeowners may be contacting their insurance company to file an insurance claim. Resources are likely to be stretched and frustration with claims will grow as our public insurance adjusters have seen with past storms. We want everyone to stay safe and also be in a condition to recover as best they can.

If you experience property damage from Hurricane Irma, here are a few claim tips for filing your insurance claim that will make the process easier and possibly protect your claim from denial or other problems, especially if you have to evacuate:

Florida’s condominium community, it’s heads up time up for this year’s hurricane season and the escalating threat as we approach the most active time for tropical storm development. A few new releases from some of the weather pundits raised the possibility of more tropical storms this year. This is the second time this year the threat level has been raised for an increase in tropical storms in 2017. One respected weather guru who publishes a daily blog is sharing his concerns about all the weather waves moving off of Africa. So as they say, game on! 

Almost two months into the 2017 hurricane season, most of the pundits have upgraded the likely number of tropical storms we can expect in the Atlantic basin this year. Of course, these experts can never tell us when and where the storms will impact a particular geographic area, but what we all can do is prepare as best we can based on the location of the property at risk. Just as the mantra for successful real estate investment is location, location, location the same applies in a disaster recovery plan. Know your location, the risk you are exposed to and understand the exposure you are facing.

Fireworks are a great way to celebrate the holiday, but they can be dangerous and start dangerous fires that damage property and generate the insurance claim process. Leave lighting them to the pros. Inexperience with fireworks is an easy way to get burned or cause property damage. 

There were a number of articles over the course of the last few weeks that focused my attention back to the water peril.  Spring storms in the middle section of the country with the severe floods that always seem to follow; global warming issues being reported almost daily with the threat of rising sea levels; and then this recent article, Flood recovery meeting set in White Sulphur Springs  from The Herald-Dispatch in West Virginia, that announced meetings with various officials to try and provide updates to the folks in southern West Virginia who were affected by last year’s floods in the mountain state. 

Ken and Joan spent their working lives in public service, Ken as an educator, and Joan as a nurse. It was their dream to have a vacation home in a warm climate so they purchased a condominium in Bonita Springs, Florida. A contractor error caused a pipe break in a unit above theirs and entirely flooded their home with hundreds of gallons of water. They were notified and drove down to Florida to inspect the damage and meet with their insurance company. That’s when the insurance claim problems began.