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This Hurricane Retrofit Guide is intended to help you identify the kinds of things that you can do well before a hurricane threatens your area that will make a difference in strengthening and protecting your home. It is also intended to provide you with enough information about various retrofits to allow you to understand how they should be carried out if you have someone else do them or to give you ideas for how to do them yourself if you are a competent do-it-yourselfer. Also note that a number of the retrofits need to be completed far enough in advance to allow curing time. Preparing your home ahead of time can reduce the amount of work that you try to get done just before the storm and allows you to focus on the truly last minute things like filling your tub with water or packing and evacuating well ahead of time depending on what you are advised to do or choose to do. Remember that emergency management and first responders need you to be as self sufficient as possible for at least the first 72 hours after a hurricane strikes. It takes some time for them to be able to set up relief operations as they have to stage the material out of harm’s way until the event passes and even then it may take time to clear roads and provide access to the hardest hit areas.
Click on Priorities & Incentives for help in deciding what retrofits you may want to make to strengthen your home and give it a better chance of surviving the storm. That section is intended to help you set priorities and create a step by step plan for strengthening your home as resources and opportunities allow. Be careful not to take on activities that you have not been trained to do or are not able to do safely.
There are a lot of resources available from the Red Cross, FEMA, the Florida Department of Emergency Management, local government, and local media outlets that will provide you with lists of things to do just before the storm. You should seek out these resources and prepare your own plan and assemble your own emergency kit. A partial set of links to State and National resources that may help in your planning and decision making can be accessed by clicking on Links to Other Resources.
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