People’s Trust Insurance Hurricane Guide Helps Floridians Prepare for Hurricane Season

If your home happens to be in its path of a hurricane, there’s a good chance it will suffer severe damage or possibly be destroyed. Being properly prepared is a great way to help minimize damage and get your claim paid quickly and fairly.

Hurricane season is just around the corner and last year’s extremely active season was a major wake-up call for residents of Florida, North Carolina and other coastal states.

In order to help Florida residents make sure they are prepared, People’s Trust Insurance recently released a hurricane preparedness guide to help their customers and homeowners in all coastal states get ready. The guide offers a variety of tools and tips necessary to properly prepare your home for the hurricane season.

Florida managed to avoid hurricanes for roughly 10 years but that streak came to an end last year when the sunshine state was hit by three named storms: Hurricanes Hermine and Matthew and Tropical Storm Colin. While nobody knows exactly what the current hurricane season will bring, there is a good chance that both Florida and North Carolina could be hit by major storms.

Properly preparing your home for the hurricane season is key to making sure damage is minimized and your claim is processed quickly and completely.

“Our hope is that our policyholders experience fewer losses so they can get their homes and their lives back to normal as fast as possible,” George Schaeffer, CEO of People’s Trust Insurance said in a press release about the guide.

Preparing Your Home Is Important

Hurricanes can cause massive amounts of damage across large swaths of land. If your home happens to be in its path there’s a good chance it will suffer severe damage or possibly be destroyed. Being properly prepared is a great way to help minimize damage and get your claim paid quickly and fairly.

The People’s Trust Insurance hurricane guide will be distributed during Hurricane Preparedness Week, which is May 7–13. The goal of the guide is to help homeowners create emergency contact lists, familiarize themselves with hurricane warnings, watches and evacuation procedures as well as review important safety tips and best practices for children, seniors and pets.

The People’s Trust Insurance guide will also contains a do’s and don’ts list as well as a pre-storm checklist.

Tips for Preparing For Hurricane Season

While we fully recommend picking up a copy of the People’s Trust Insurance guide, if you can’t get your hands on one or just don’t want to wait to start preparing your house here are a few tips to help you get ready for hurricane season.

Preparing Your Home

• High winds can cause trees to fall or branches to break so have all trees that are close to your home trimmed and/or taken down if they are dead.
• Consider replacing your roof with wind resistant materials and adding storm shutters to your home. In addition to protecting your house, these upgrades will result in a discount on insurance.
• Purchase a generator for use during any extended power outages.
• Do a complete home inventory of your possessions. Taking video is a great idea and be sure to keep your inventory offsite or in the cloud. This will be a big help if you have to make a claim.

REVIEW: Top 5 Best Home Inventory Apps on the Market

General Preparedness

• Make sure that you and every member of your family knows where to go in the event of a hurricane and you are ordered to evacuate. Be aware of evacuation routes in your local area and have a plan for where to meet and where you will stay if your home is in an evacuation zone.
• Have an evacuation supply kit or go bag in the event you have to evacuate. The kit should include batteries, flashlight, first aid supplies, cash and copies of any critical paperwork you may need.
• Have a supply of food, water and other critical supplies in the event that you are not ordered to evacuate but suffer power outages or other damage which makes it difficult to leave your home and get to a store.
• Put together a family communication plan in the event that your family members are in a different location when the hurricane strikes. This will include everyone’s contact information as well as predetermined meeting spots once it is safe to venture outside.

Insurance Issues 

• It’s important to remember that flood damage is not covered by a standard homeowners policy. If your home is flooded due to a hurricane you would need a flood policy in order to make a claim. If you live in a flood prone area you should consider a separate flood policy.
• Make repairs to your home as soon as possible. Damage that occurs after the hurricane may not be covered if you don’t make reasonable efforts to protect your home. As an example, if your roof was damaged you will need to cover it with a tarp or other temporary fix.
• Contact your agent as soon as is safe to do so to start the claims process. A complete inventory will help speed up the process and make sure you are reimbursed for all of your losses.

Florida homeowners, if you feel that you do not have the proper coverage in an event of a hurricane, please call 888-685-4704 now or simply request quotes online and we can easily review the best rate and coverage option for you. Our process is extremely efficient when it comes to homeowners insurance services. We have the privilege of shopping the best home insurance providers for the state of Florida. And we will shop and compare your policy against 30 different companies and get you the best rate for your home. Protect your Florida home today! Get a Florida home insurance quote now!