Ep 026 - Preparing for Natural Disasters - A Homeowner's Guide

Welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, where you'll discover strategies to save money, save time, and be better organized in managing your largest financial asset and biggest expense, your home. Your hosts, John Bodrozic and Beth Dodson, who are co-founders of HomeZada, have been supporting homeowners for over 20 years. They are here to share with you their tips and suggestions, as well as interviews with industry experts. With the goal of helping you become a smarter homeowner. Now here's your hosts, John and Beth.

Hi everyone, and welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast. I'm Beth Dodson, and I with me is John Bedrosik. We are co-founders in HomeZala as well as your hosts for this show. We talk about all things home and how we can help you manage all those details because the home. Is a complex entity and member of our family. Yes, that's what I think. It's a member of our family. And how do we help it stay really efficient? It's on top— we're on top of things as it relates to this home. And how does it operate wonderfully? So, John, today we're going to talk about disasters. Yeah. Weather disasters across the country, which kind of suck. And we've seen a lot recently, and we want to talk about the different kinds of disasters. We want to talk about the different locations, how people need to get prepared, and what can they do as it relates to documenting things prior to a potential disaster coming to their location. And so, with that said, one of the things I want to talk about. is, first of all, what kinds of disasters are we faced with in the United States and in what sort of regions, um, so that we can help people understand how to be prepared, especially because we've seen a lot of people in the last several years move all over the country. And I think they're getting to locations Not aware of what some of the potential risks are.

Yeah, though it's such a serious issue for pretty much every homeowner in America as we just sort of watch the news over what's going on with these disasters. And, you know, I think that predominantly you could say many different types of disasters are regional, like hurricanes. People would think of hurricanes primarily hitting either the Gulf Coast or the East Coast. Um, essentially the West Coast really doesn't get hit in hurricanes. Now granted, I think some hurricanes may start up in the— on the West Coast in Mexico and then move its way up into Arizona, but by the— by the time it gets to Arizona or Southern California, it's turned into a tropical storm.

Correct.

Um, so there's that aspect of it. Then there's tornadoes and Tornado Alley. And that is also a pretty big wide swath of the country because tornadoes have been known to hit everywhere from like, let's say, the western— the eastern side of Colorado all the way into the Midwest of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, the whole South. Wildfires. Most people would think of wildfires as being a West Coast thing, California, maybe Oregon, Texas.

Yeah.

But we've started seeing fires in Colorado and Utah. And I even saw in the news like a month ago, there was wildfires in North Carolina and South Carolina on the East Coast now.

Florida.

You know, the Midwest tends to get hit with— the Upper Midwest tends to get hit with snow blizzards or snowmageddons. I don't even know what they call them, where it's just multiple days and days and days on end where it's below freezing and the amount of snow is Is, uh, is just massive amounts. And, and that in and of itself can cause major issues. Uh, you know, in the, in the Northeast, they call them nor'easters.

Yeah.

I think is what they call them, though. I'm not a weather— I'm not a complete weather guy, but, uh, you know, the, the nor'easter of snow upon hitting the New England area. So pretty much every part of the country faces, you know, one, if not two, perhaps major climate issues that could significantly cause disruption to their lives and to their property.

Yeah, and I'd like to add a few more only because I want people to understand a bit more of what actually does go on around the country. So we also— you talked about snow, but there's also major hail and sleet that can occur throughout the Midwest and the Upper East Coast and what have you. And a lot of people who don't experience that, sometimes hail can be so big that it actually is damaging rooflines and what have you. So it's really important. And then we see this in a lot of varying areas of the country, places from Idaho, Iowa, and Idaho to the Carolinas and other areas, but flooding. So out of nowhere, massive rains will come.

Yeah.

And we've actually seen that a little bit on the West Coast too, where if you have a dry spell, And then out of nowhere, you have all these massive rains. Flooding can cause more erosion, which then causes more landslides. Yes. And it just does a lot of damage to homes. And we've seen this over years all over the place. And so we've just brought up water. Wind is another one as well. Wind, um, hurricanes and tornadoes come with a ton of wind. Um, we've talked about, um, water in a freezing capacity, water in a liquid capacity. We've also talked about fire and, um, oh, look, I feel like it's Earth, Wind and Fire. Um, and, um, well, just seriously. And then sometimes the ground can just not settle properly. And, you know, the ground can—

Earthquakes.

Earthquakes. Exactly. And so there's a lot of different things. It is like Earth, Wind and Fire. This is like crazy. And so Mother Nature has a way of bringing unique situations that we have to deal with in our homes. And with that said, one of the first things that I think you and I both agree on is whatever happens, find a way to get your family safe. And when I say family, I mean your pets, your livestock, Your individual human family members. Just find a way to get everyone safe, which means you will have to figure out an evacuation plan, and you may not know what that is immediately. For instance, um, recently the, uh, the wildfires in, uh, the fires in, uh, Southern California, there was some concern about where people could evacuate. Like, obviously going west would lead you into the ocean, so that's not going to get you anywhere. But how you leave is really important because the fires were going in unique situations. And so pay attention to how you can evacuate and what you need to take in that evacuation. And so, John, we've talked about this. What are some of the things that you think we need to take If there's ever an evacuation for anyone in the country.

Yeah, the great point. It's, it's, it's study the evacuation routes. I know that a lot of the municipalities on the East Coast, and there's literally signage that says this is a hurricane evacuation route.

Yes.

Unfortunately, the West Coast doesn't really have that as it relates to those fires that we saw in LA. So sometimes you might have to, like with everything in life, you and I are big proponents of plan and think about these things ahead. So, map out multiple evacuation routes because if an event happens, if everybody's going down one path, it's going to be blocked up and clogged up kind of mentality. But it's also having part of that, how do I get out quickly, is having a go bag ready.

Yeah.

Right? So, it's what medicines do I need to take with me for me or my family or my pets? Do I need to have, you know, my electronics and my chargers ready to go kind of mentality? Do I want to take my Mobile phone, tablets, etc., access to sort of information. There's a quick change of clothes, right? And what clothes are you taking? It depends. Again, if it's a winter issue, then you better take warm clothes, right? If it's a, if it's a summer issue, maybe you can get by with a different set of change of clothes kind of mentality. There's so many things that you could sort of think about what's important to you and your families as it relates to having that go bag. It's also Potentially, if you have multiple family members and, you know, some family members are in school, parents are picking up the kids from school, you got adult parents here, it's almost like setting up a meetup place.

Yeah.

Because you may be evacuating from different points and where are you and the family gonna meet up kind of mentality. So having all these discussions as a family, as it relates to the evacuation routes, the go bags, the meetup joints, what are we gonna take in, what are we gonna take with us in a go bag? You know, if you got warned by the local authorities of like, you've got 5 minutes to get out, maybe your go bag is already, but you got 5 minutes to take some other things, right? Mentally think about what are the things that you wanna be able to take with you when you have to get out on a relatively quick basis.

Yeah, and I remind people water is an essential as well as even maybe you need some pet food or pet bowls or whatever. But bringing up livestock, we also experienced, It was the Santa Rosa fires, correct?

Yes.

The Santa Rosa fires, and they had a lot of livestock. If at any point you think that this could be detrimental, we also highly recommend that you open your gates. Animals will figure out how to escape the situation and people will round them up eventually. And we saw that at the Santa Rosa fires. People, people were totally helping with the livestock and the, and finding the pets. They will round them up and they will bring them back to the appropriate owner. But letting the animals get to safety is also really, really important because instinctually they will figure it out.

Yes, indeed. Um, so a huge portion of that, I think the other part of, I think the, the planning and the disaster preparedness is after you think about the evacuation route, it's the What can you do? You can't stop Mother Nature, can't stop whether the hurricane's going to hit your house or 100 miles away from your house or whatever. But what can you do to try to protect your property to minimize any potential damage if it does come to specifically your neighborhood and your house? And I think a huge part of that is dependent on you knowing where you live and knowing what the issues are.

Correct.

Right. It's the, I live on the beach, there's storm surge. Storm surge means flooding. Sandbags may help you prepare that house. Wildfires usually come with high wind. Can I clear the brush around my house to minimize embers floating and coming near my house? So yeah, you may be okay with trees and shrubs burning, but you're trying to prevent your house from burning.

Correct.

So it's creating this, strategy around understanding what the impact of the events that your home is likely to face, and then taking the steps over what are the things that you could try to do to protect and minimize the potential damage.

No, I agree with you. And then, as it relates to the steps that you suggested, other things may be projects that you may want to undertake to add to your homes. So, for instance, you suggested sandbags during water surge areas. Similar to that, if you're in hurricane territory, there's ways to actually get hurricane shutters added to your home to prevent water from getting inside. There's ways to build a protection area and underground bunker type thing for anyone who lives in tornado area, you know, just to get your family and everything else to safety. Because that's really, really important. And then there's also other areas, like you said, one of the things, if high winds are involved, can you find ways to move items out of the way? So you talked about shrubs, but also looking at outdoor furniture and especially umbrellas, how quickly umbrellas can fly or cause flame because they're generally A cloth on top and how they can easily get thrown in through windows or what have you. And that in and of itself, the umbrellas alone, could be something that you shove in your garage as quickly as possible and shove all of your other furniture maybe up against walls or what have you if you can't get it inside quickly. But those types of things can actually prevent a lot of— those tasks can prevent a lot of damage.

Yes, indeed. And you couldn't be more right. It's really trying to research what type of events your home is and what those things can do. Another thing, so like you said, there are things that you can do as a project/remodel to kind of what I call harden the home. Then there's the, I've got a day to prepare, I'm going to move all the furniture. There's also even a lot of homeowners don't even know how to shut the gas or the electric or the water off at their house. That's true.

Huge. Huge.

And those things, especially like if you're told, hey, you got to evacuate in 5 minutes. Well, depending on what type of event it is, you may want to go to your house and shut the gas off if there's gas or propane or whatever, shut the electrical panel off, shut the water off because it's the weather event may cause some initial damage, That may not be that great, but that initial damage damaged the infrastructure or the utilities of your house, and then that ends up being the source that actually burns the house down to the ground.

Yeah, kind of mentality. Correct. That's brilliant. I forget about that. And that can also protect your neighbors. You know, something crazy could happen in your house and it could just spread quickly in other houses. Oh yes, that's a huge one. I totally forgot about that. That's really, really a good tip. Yeah, I even attended—

we're in Northern California— that was about a year ago. I went to the local fire station and they were talking about preparing your home for wildfires, and they were talking about people with pools and how the fire department— you, you actually wanted to open your gates and this, that, and the other so that if the fire department came and wanted to protect your home and you were too far from a fire hydrant, whatever, they could even actually use your pool water to kind of help douse your, douse your home. So There's all these little things that I think people just need to sort of spend their time on to think about how, you know, after obviously first thing we said is you gotta make sure your family and your pets and everything and— Oh, without a doubt. Are safe if you have to get out. But then the other aspect is figuring out all the things that you can try to do to minimize your home. I think even yet another thing is the insurance aspect of this. Yeah, getting ahead of most people. Most people are probably underinsured.

Most people might be because they haven't taken an inventory. And if they haven't taken an inventory, they don't understand the contents of their home, or they don't understand what the fixed assets of their home are. Maybe they've done some remodel projects and forgot to let their insurance company know that they updated their home. All these things Can play a role, but getting in front by taking a home inventory is something that is really important for situations like this and disaster preparedness. And I can tell you, we've had some recent customers come to HomeZada and ask, "What do I need to do? I never took a home inventory. I have three homes in Florida underwater because of a hurricane," and I'm like. Well, it's kind of hard if you don't have access to your home right now.

Right.

And it was sad because I was— I had to deliver this bad news. And I'm like, but if you can, if you can find photographs that maybe you've taken, then you can use them to start using Homes.ai to get the inventory identified. If you can recall what you had, that's really important. But the whole point of a home inventory is to do it before something happens. And John, you and I have talked about this a lot. If at a minimum, and you believe you've got a plan for evacuation and you've got some time and you've got— you've done some tasks by, you know, putting things in your garage or taking things down or making sure you've taken care of some of the task-oriented activities. In the house, you can quickly walk around with your phone and take videos of—

Yes.

Each room at a very basic, and you can grab, you can do that really quickly. That's only if you're prepared to leave and evacuate and you've got some time. If you don't have any time, just go. But literally you can walk around and take videos and if your whole family happens to be gathered, everyone can do it at the same time. Split up the house, everyone takes videos and you can compile it later. To understand what you had and evaluate the items. When you do do that, I do believe this is just my personal opinion. People forget about what's in their drawers underneath their beds and in their closets. So if you could quickly take photographs or videos also in those spaces, that would be extremely helpful because that could be. Money that you won't get as reimbursements from your insurance company if you cannot document it. And so having— being as prepared as you can with a home inventory is really important. If you do not have the time, obviously take some videos and take videos of as many nooks and crannies that you can think of, even your attics, storage spaces, those types of things becomes very important.

Yeah, and to add to that, the inventory oftentimes becomes important documents that you might need to have access to if the huge unfortunate thing happens where your entire home is destroyed, right?

Mm-hmm.

Because it's copies of your insurance policy that you can have, other personal documents that you might need, identification documents, if you have the ability to access those. not being physically in your home, then they didn't burn up in the home or they didn't flood in the home and those documents didn't get destroyed. And now you need those documents for family reasons, for financial reasons, for insurance claim reasons, and you want to be able to have copies of those documents in some sort of electronic way so that you can have access to those as well. I think another angle to this is Most people in America have what I call a standard insurance policy, but there's all lots of— the insurance industry oftentimes provides many additional coverages that you can have that are either A, for things like high-value items, or B, even catered for specific types of events.

Yes, meaning like earthquake or hurricane or water, etc. Yes, that's correct. And The more prepared you are, the more knowledgeable you are about the policies and the information about your home, the more you can provide that information to your insurance company, and you can get it accurately assessed versus scrambling trying to figure things out. And I'm a firm believer also: take your time to figure out what. You had in your homes, and file the claim. But work with your organ, your insurance company. Say I'm getting all the details to you, and get it as accurate as possible. And leave no stone unturned. And your insurance company, I'm hoping, will work with you. You know, we've had our own challenges as well in our house—not from disasters, but from some other things that we'll talk about in another podcast. But We worked with our insurance company and that allowed us to get reimbursed appropriately. So with that said, I mean, like, John, we've talked briefly about, you know, what types of catastrophe— catastrophes exist around the United States. We've talked about the types of tasks people can do in order to get prepared, even some remodel projects to harden the home. And we've talked about getting prepared as best as possible, get a go bag together, getting a backup evacuation plan, get inventoried of your items. Is there any other thing that we need to talk about as it relates to this to help people better understand what they need to be prepared for, for those just-in-case situations if it were to happen?

Yeah, I thought of one thing while you were talking there, Beth, which was, let's say we're in that— we're in the scenario where you have to evacuate, right? And then you come back and your house is destroyed. That's the most horrific thing that we want to protect against and all these things. But what if you come back to your house, the house isn't destroyed, but you don't have water, gas, or utilities in the house?

Yikes.

And so now, do you have the amount of sort of— do you— can you live in your home where it's sort of less functional because you don't have utilities in there? So it, and then it also goes into what I call having the proper tools to basically either A, live in the home without the utilities, or B, the proper tools to be able to be more prepared, right? Do you own a small little chainsaw so that you could sort of clear brush? Do you own an emergency generator?

Right.

That with a gas situation that you could fire up the emergency generator and keep your refrigerator running? Because you don't want your food to spoil, right? Because you may have to live in your house. A lot of people live in their homes post-hurricane. The house hasn't been damaged, but now they have to live in their home for 2 weeks without power.

Yes, correct.

So it's, it's thinking about, you know, we tend to fall into the, I hope nothing happens to my house, and we hope that that happens to everybody. And then we go to the other end of the extreme of like, oh man, that's gonna be horrific if I lose my house. There's that middle ground of I have to live in my house, but it's partially damaged, or I don't have the utilities. And trying to understand, do you have enough food? Do you have enough the ability, you know, to stay warm if it happens in the winter, to stay cool if it happens in the summer? Candles, batteries, flashlights.

Water.

Uh, water. Uh, all these sort of things that people need to think about, about living in their home for a period of time without sort of the modern conveniences of life.

Yeah, no, this is, this is an important part of the discussion because you're correct. A lot of people, even though they think it won't happen to me, you may get some remnants of something else that could happen. And not being prepared for that could cause the family more angst and more frustration, and it may force people to leave their home. And go have to stay somewhere else. And in fact, I know some people; they had some problems in a recent hurricane. The one that hit North Carolina on the western side also actually hit Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, which most people didn't—they didn't know because the North Carolina part was so drastic. But a lot of people from Georgia lost some power and didn't have the backup generators, so. Not only did they lose power, but they also lost, um, internet signals, so they couldn't even do their jobs. So they ended up going up further into other states to stay with family in order to make that happen. So are there family members that you can access close by that you can drive to? Because sometimes there may not be some availability of planes, or planes may be too expensive to get out at that time. So is there that availability as well? I mean, for instance, Florida is a big state. And if Florida is hit by a hurricane, it's generally in some portion of the state. There may be other options in other parts of the state that you can go stay. So there's all those different options out there. And so this topic always kind of brings me a downer because I never want to see anybody have to lose their home or have to go through all this stuff. But it is a reality in this country, and I know it's a reality in other parts of the world as well, as we've seen in other areas. So is there anything else you want to add about making sure people are prepared as it relates to natural disasters?

The only other thing I could think of, and we don't, it's probably not, it's probably a separate podcast, but just a little bit of research of if something did happen, how would the claims process work with your insurance company? I mean, there's, so there's probably lots of content that your insurance company may already provide on their websites. You can go find it. You know, even Homesada's got some sort of educational tools of like, I believe that most people in America probably haven't filed a claim. Yeah, I agree. If you look at just the pure statistics. So if something unfortunate did happen to you, in the stress of the moment, you were like, oh my, you're like, there's the emotional aspect of my house is significantly damaged or worse yet, completely destroyed. So there's the, dealing with your emotions and all those sort of horrific things that happened as a result of that. And now you're on the same journey of learning of what it's gonna take to financially recover.

Yeah.

Which puts your brain even in a more stressful situation. So perhaps in that part of, 'cause the whole topic of this podcast is preparedness, maybe a little bit of research and preparedness to understand how the insurance claim process might work if you unfortunately had to go through it, is worth it because it may— that research may prompt you to do a few other extra things in that preparedness so that if the, if the bad thing actually did unfortunately happen to you, you're more mentally prepared as well as you've prepared either documents or a strategy or whatever the case may be to be in a better position to kind of deal with that situation.

Yeah, I think you're on to something, and I think Part of what preparedness does is it allows you to stay a little bit calmer. And these situations are very nuanced. And to John's point, they can lead to a lot of emotions, a lot of fear, a lot of angst, a lot of activity and anxiety. However, from our own personal experience of dealing with some water damage, which we'll talk about at another time, the fact that we were as calm as we could be allowed us to take the appropriate steps to minimize any damage. And so I think that's going to have to be something that people practice. And if you can be as prepared as you can be, you may likely be calmer to the situation. And I think that that'll be a key area In order for you to respond rather than react and stress yourself out. You want to be able to respond as calmly as you can and say, okay, what do I need to do? You know, we have our go bags ready. We have our evacuation plan. We have solidified and hardened the house as best we could. We know what is forthcoming. We understand some of the claims process should that happen to us. And we have our contact information for our insurance company at a minimum. Right. And what else do we need to do? And it gives people the ability to get organized. If some people operate best with like a checklist, I would even suggest creating one. You can find some online as well, and you can stash them in a particular location where your go bags are. And that could help calm the mind. During these challenging situations. And that will bring people to a better place that the whole family can remain calm. Because once one family member starts getting crazy and losing their mind, it kind of is contagious. And so it's going to behoove everybody to go, okay, how can we get organized?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, I know that you and I are huge proponents of planning.

Yeah.

Um, and the more you plan, the more you can stay calm, because if you haven't planned and you get thrown unexpectedly into a stressful situation with anxiety, you may be having to make decisions relatively quickly, and that your decision-making may not be as good as it could be if you hadn't prepared beforehand, and you end up making mistakes. Um, and nobody wants those, those mistakes to happen. So anything that you could sort of glean from this episode is the need to sort of have a plan for all these different aspects of disasters. And like I said, the last bit of this is unfortunately, if something were to happen with you, it's the financial resilience. How do I get back to where I was before the disaster?

Yes.

Because that's ultimately, yes, in terms of personal property and home, Now, clearly, number one importance is family, friends, pets, neighbors, et cetera, human life, right? But assuming we take care of all those things, then let's be prepared for the financial resiliency.

Totally. Yeah, no, I think this is a good topic we wanted to bring up with everybody. We don't wanna bring everyone down, but we want people to prepare. And we think it was a necessary topic as well because of what we've seen throughout the country. Natural disaster seasons—they roll into each other and are all over the place. So if you think other people in your network need to learn about preparedness as it relates to natural disasters, please share this with them. We invite you to like this podcast as well. And if you want to learn more about our company, Homezada, and/or be a smarter homeowner podcast, please visit us at homezada.com. H-O-M-E-Z-A-D-A dot com. And we invite you to share this, like it, and come and visit us at our next episode of Be a Smarter Homeowner podcast. Thank you so much for joining us, and we wish you all the best.

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