How to prepare your home or business for disasters

Neither Rochester, New York, nor Allentown, Pennsylvania are considered high-risk areas for disasters like a hurricane, tornadoes or catastrophic flooding.

But Jeremias Maneiro, a real estate broker based in Rochester, can remember heavy rains a couple of years ago that flooded the beachfront property of some of his clients so severely that they couldn’t find renters, resulting in lost income for the owners.

And Tom Williams, executive director of development for the Allentown-based Cityline Construction, recalled a fire in a strip mall that forced a Chinese restaurant and a rehab center, both underinsured, to permanently shut down.

A sampling of real estate brokers, property managers and restoration experts from Rochester to Baltimore agreed that no matter where you live, you would be foolish not to prepare for a disaster that could devastate your business or home. It’s not a question of will it happen, they said, it’s a question of when.

Have a plan

And the first step, they also agreed, is to plan in advance.

“If a catastrophe happens in your area and you didn’t properly prepare before that, your sense of fear goes up and you might not know what to do,” said Jaime Novinger-Toigo, president of Service 1^st Restoration & Remodeling, a Harrisburg, Pa., which specializes in property disaster recovery.

“If you can take some time today and focus on the plan of what-if, and then identify potential risks, you’re in a way better position.”

Novinger-Toigo said her business recommends three parts to every disaster preparedness plan:

• A disaster plan, that includes all potential risks.
• An emergency action plan, to make sure the staff knows what to do in case of any
• A business continuity plan, that spells out how to get the business up and running again as soon as possible.

If a business both owns and operates out of the same building, the planning is fairly straightforward. The business owner is responsible for any damages and clean-up, no matter what the disaster.

But it gets trickier if the business — or the resident, if it’s residential property — is a tenant.

Generally speaking, the owner is responsible for the building (walls, roof, floors, etc.) while the tenant is responsible for the contents (supplies, furniture, computers, etc.)

But a tenant might have installed his own flooring, for example, which means the tenant is responsible if the flooring is damaged.

“You need to know your coverage,” said Lisa Lavender, chief operating officer of Berks Fire Water Restorations, of Reading, Pa. which services clients from Lehigh and Schuylkill counties to Lancaster and Chester counties. “In a perfect world, both (landlord and tenant) have a well-developed continuity plan, and all the intricacies are already laid out.”

Ideally, these details are worked out in a lease, that spells out exactly who is responsible for what when a disaster hits.  Business owners renting space, the experts advised, should make sure that’s the case before signing a lease.

“If you know who needs to repair what in case of an emergency, it makes for a cleaner and quicker repair process,” Cityline Construction’s Williams said.

Most restoration companies, like Lavender’s and Novinger-Toigo’s, offer templates businesses can use when drawing up a disaster plan.

And, they are not the only ones.

The Federal Emergency Management Administration, according to the experts interviewed, is an excellent resource for such information — FEMA’s website includes a 12-page booklet entitled “Every Business Should Have a Plan,” for example. State emergency management agencies also can be helpful, offering basic disaster plan templates especially useful to smaller businesses with fewer resources.

Perhaps not surprisingly, those smaller businesses tend to be less likely than their larger counterparts to have a well-devised disaster recovery plan — or any plan at all, according to the experts. And even if they do, it might not be spelled out clearly, or is known only to one person, who might not be around when disaster strikes.

Know your insurance coverage

Insurance is a factor major factor in planning for any disaster as well, and the experts suggest a thorough read of your policy to cover all contingencies.

“If you have the right endorsement on your policy, the insurance company will actually pay for an on-site trailer, for example, or set you up somewhere else so your business is back up and running,” Williams said. “You want to be able to be covered for any type of disaster that might hit you.”

“You have to make sure your insurance is up to date, and sometimes that’s the easiest thing to get overlooked if you’re a small business owner,” said Maneiro, the Rochester real estate broker. “You have to have adequate coverage, so if you lose your inventory, it’s covered.”

Insurance is especially paramount for homeowners, who should make sure all possible contingencies are covered.

For those who rent their homes, the lease is their lifeline in case of a disaster.

“When we work with tenants, we always recommend they get a tenant policy,” Maneiro said. To avoid litigation, he said, tenants should make sure they have a policy that spells out exactly who is responsible for what.

The luckiest such tenants live in housing where the management company has a carefully plotted emergency response plan.

Baltimore-based Continental Realty Corp., which owns and manages apartment complexes and retail spaces from Maryland to Florida, has for years had a set procedure in place for dealing with disasters, according to Crystal Frey, the company’s senior vice president of human resources.

The procedure covers such contingencies as making sure all employees and residents (and their pets) are accounted for, setting up a staging area for displaced residents that also includes access to police, fire and Red Cross personnel, emergency kits, and more.

The first priority, Frey said, is to make sure everyone is safe and has adequate food, water, blankets and the like, after which the company helps find hotel rooms for tenants if necessary and secure personal belongings.

The company also works with insurance companies to restore the apartments and repair any damage.

“Our people know what to do, that’s the important thing,” she said. “In situations like that, you don’t want to be wondering, ‘What’s my next step?’ ”

For residents reliant on their own insurance for having their uninhabitable home restored, Williams recommended getting safe and settled as soon as possible.

“The best thing they could do is to find permanent lodging, get a new set of clothes – just try to start moving on,” he said.

“As soon as you get that part  done and you know that your family is safe, you’ll be able to work better in the process of improving your home.”