Preparing Your SWFL Home for Hurricane Season: Essential Tips
With the 2025 hurricane season underway, it's crucial to be ready and take proactive steps to protect your home and family. This includes reinforcing your property, planning for evacuation, and assembling an emergency supply kit. Be sure to check and strengthen your roof, secure all windows and doors, trim back trees, and ensure your family—including pets—has a clear plan in case of a storm. Here are some helpful tips to get started.
Home Preparation
² Cover windows and lanai doors with shutters, plywood, or other protective materials. High winds and windblown objects can easily break unprotected entry points, allowing the elements to enter your home.
² Reinforce garage doors, a potential weak point during high winds. A failed or improperly secured garage door can create a breach in your home's envelope, allowing high winds to build up pressure inside, potentially causing structural damage.
² Clean gutters, drains, and other areas of debris to prevent flooding. Clogged gutters can lead to water overflowing and pooling around your home's foundation. As water backs up, it can also seep under roof shingles, leading to leaks, rot, and potential damage to the fascia board and roof deck.
² Install check valves in your plumbing to prevent backups. During heavy rainfall or sewer overflows, the main sewer line can become overwhelmed, causing sewage to back up. Check valves stop this backflow from entering your home.
² Trim trees and bushes to prevent them from falling onto your house and to reduce wind resistance. Hurricane winds can easily knock down weak or dead branches, creating dangerous debris that can damage property or cause injury. Trimming removes these hazards before the storm.
² Secure outdoor furniture and other items that could become projectiles during a storm. Strong winds can easily pick up and propel items like chairs, tables, and yard decorations, turning them into flying missiles. Securing these items by either storing them indoors or tying them down helps minimize the risk of damage and injury.
² Review your insurance policies to ensure you have adequate protection against potential damage from winds, flooding, and storm surges. Check your coverage limits for dwelling, personal property, and additional living expenses, and take note of exclusions such as flooding, or limitations on coverage for certain types of damage.
Emergency Planning
² Develop an evacuation plan and know your evacuation zones, including designated shelters. If you need to evacuate, have these items in an separate emergency kit in your car: flares, physical maps, jumper cables, extra cans of gas.
² Prepare a hurricane kit with essential supplies like water, non-perishable food, first-aid supplies, medication, and other necessities. It allows you to be self-sufficient for at least 72 hours without outside assistance, especially if power and other utilities are disrupted.
² Gather and store important documents, such as insurance policies and identification.
² Use weather apps to stay informed about storm updates. They provide real-time information about the storm's location, intensity, and projected path, enabling timely decision-making for safety and property protection.
² Take photographs of your home and its contents prior to the hurricane. This documentation can be extremely helpful for insurance purposes and can help you prove the extent of damage caused by the storm.
Pet Preparation
² Create a separate emergency kit for your pets. FEMA offers suggestions for what to place in that kit to ensure your pet’s best chance of getting through the emergency safely.
² FEMA also recommends keeping your pet’s microchip information up to date in case they get lost. Microchipped pets are significantly more likely to be returned to their owners than those without.
² Familiarize yourself with pet-friendly hotels and shelters along your evacuation routes in case you must leave your home. Many emergency shelters cannot take in animals that are not service animals for health and safety reasons.
Know the Difference Between Advisory, Watch & Warning
Advisory: An advisory is issued when significant weather is happening or forecast, but no widespread impacts are expected. Prepare for the type of inclement weather that is indicated in the advisory.
Watch: This is issued when dangerous weather is forecast to occur and widespread impacts to life and property are expected. Prepare for the type of severe weather that is indicated in the watch by reviewing your safety plans so that you are ready to take action.
Warning: A warning is issued when severe weather is occurring and poses an immediate danger to life and property. Take action, meaning you should immediately execute your safety plan for the type of severe weather that is indicated in the warning.