What Is the 1st Thing I should do after a Hurricane or Storm?

Take pictures or video!

Nothing will preserve the extent of damage better for your hurricane claims with an insurance company. Your natural instinct after a hurricane or other storm is to start picking up the damage first and by the time the insurance adjustor arrives at your house, you have made it look as presentable as possible. Taking photos or videotape of the hurricane damage before you clean up preserves and establishes the true extent of damages your house suffered.

It is more natural to begin cleanup and removal, but resist that temptation to want to show the world and even the insurance company what a good homeowner you are.  Start immediately with the photographs and video of the scene. 

You can never have too many photographs or video of the hurricane damage or storm damage.  You should shoot from all angles.  Go out into the street and across the street, take pictures of the devastation caused by the hurricane from your neighbor's yard.

Then, move in to capture close-ups.  Show where light is coming through the house before you put blue tarps on the roof.  If there are personal items scattered and damaged, get snapshots or video of them as you found them.

We all remember the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina because the images were of the real destruction caused by the hurricane.  Imagine your response if the news agencies had waited for New Orleans and other areas to be cleaned up before the pictures and video were broadcast.  No one would have sent money for aid.  So why should you expect an insurance adjustor to be as sympathetic when all he or she sees is a house that has been put back in order. 

If you have already cleaned up the mess when you are reading this, then go to your neighbors and ask to look at their photographs and video of the hurricane damage.  Chances are that if they took some at the right time, at least part of your destruction would be on film.  Or, if your neighbors don't have any photos of the hurricane damage, take pictures and video of the temporary repairs and the piles of debris in your yard.