Preparing your home for hurricane season Preparing your home and your wallet for hurricane season

Twenty years ago, Hurricane Isabel came ashore on the Outer Banks, then scraped across much of Virginia, causing $925 million in property damage to the state. With the core of the 2023 hurricane season about to get started, there is the potential for more damage in the next couple of months.

Ian Giammanco, lead research meteorologist for the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, examines the influence of extreme weather on residential and commercial structures.

"Our role is to test buildings and structures against the elements. What are the vulnerabilities in our building materials and structures, and what are the things we can actually do to reduce damage," Giammanco said.

He suggests homeowners spend some time now to guard against wind damage. Some things are simple; others are more involved.

First, go over your homeowners policy with your insurance agent. While not especially exciting, it will prevent surprises later. The next step is to walk around your property, looking for trees close to your home with big limbs that hang over your roof. Trim them back so they are no longer a threat.

Giammanco cautions: "tree damage occurs in winds that ordinarily would not have structurally damaged a home, but every time trees come down, branches get knocked into roofs. And that also lets water in: sometimes in the worst case, that means you're out of your home because you have to gut the drywall."

Even a little water can do lasting damage. In homes that are more than 30 years old, he suggests checking for cracks and gaps around windows and sealing them up, as water driven by hurricane winds can easily get in through those cracks.

Other things that help, which admittedly require more time and money, are replacing the garage door and strengthening the roof.

Giammanco emphasizes the point: "garages are a weak point in any wind storm - tornadoes, hurricanes, you name it - it does not matter. When they fail, they let wind into the home, and begin to push air upward and outward, which is the same direction that the wind outside is working on the roof to try to pull it apart."

There should be labeling on every garage door to indicate its rating scale.

"Check if it is rated for 130 mph or more. It will have extra bracing and more rugged hardware," he recommends.

For the roof, you can apply an ice and water sealant to the shingles to keep water out, but to keep the structural integrity intact, he suggests upgrading the roof to the IBHS fortified criteria - including ring shank nails to secure the decking in place in strong winds.

As property values have escalated, insurance rates are catching up. Recently, much has been made about insurers' reluctance to issue new homeowners policies in Florida. While the risk of winds and flooding is especially high there in the warming climate, Giammanco points to another underlying cause: litigation.

"Florida accounts for almost three-quarters of all insurance lawsuit claims in the United States, and that's what has created such market pressure. That's just not sustainable," he said.

Ironically, when considering both current building codes and their enforcement, Florida has the best building code system in the U.S. Virginia comes in second.

Giammanco has seen their success firsthand.

"When we looked at the damage after Hurricane Ian - we surveyed more than 3,600 residential homes - 455 of those were built after the 2002 Florida building code had come into existence," he said. "Not one of those had structural damage."

The specific wind speed design level does vary across Florida - it's higher in the Keys than in the central peninsula - but the system of enforcement is consistent across the state.

Giammanco knows strong codes are needed to meet the challenge of the warming climate.

"Building codes are where we put in the provisions for the communities for tomorrow," he said. "It's going to affect people 20 to 30 years from now, and we need to use the tools we have. And that is a really important piece in the first steps in adapting to what is a changing climate."

On top of enforcing the new codes, he knows there will be other challenges as houses get older.

"We have to deal with an aging building stock and how we effectively retrofit those structures - that's the key to dealing with the weather we are going to face," he said.