Hurricane Season 2026: The Complete South Florida Homeowner's Prep Guide

NOAA is calling for a below-normal 2026 Atlantic hurricane season. Eight to 14 named storms, three to six hurricanes, one to three of those reaching major hurricane strength. A developing El Niño is expected to increase wind shear across the Atlantic basin, which tends to tear storms apart before they organize.

Here is the part that matters: none of that is a landfall forecast.

Andrew hit in 1992, a season with only seven named storms. Homestead is still rebuilding some of what it lost. A quiet season is a statistical description of the whole basin over six months. It tells you nothing about whether a Category 3 will be sitting off Grand Bahama on a Thursday in September pointed at Boca Raton.

The Atlantic season runs June 1 through November 30. Activity peaks between August and October. It is July right now, which means you are sitting inside the single best preparation window of the entire year: the storms have not started, the stores are stocked, the contractors are answering their phones, and nobody is in line at Home Depot at 6 a.m. arguing over the last sheet of plywood.

This guide is built for Broward and Palm Beach County homeowners, condo owners, renters, boat owners, and business owners. It covers what to do now, what to do when a storm has a name and a cone, and what to do after. It is long on purpose. Bookmark it, and send it to the neighbor who moved here last year and has not lived through one yet.

Part 1: Know Your Zone (Do This First, It Takes Two Minutes)

Everything else in this guide depends on one piece of information: whether you live in an evacuation zone, and which one.

Evacuation zones in Florida are lettered A through F. Zone A is the most vulnerable and evacuates first. Zone F evacuates last, and only for the most extreme storms. Zones are drawn based on storm surge modeling, not wind, which is why a home three miles inland with elevation can be outside every zone while a home on the Intracoastal is Zone A.

Broward County: Look up your address at Broward.org/Hurricane. The county maintains an interactive evacuation map.

Palm Beach County: Look up your address at discover.pbc.gov/oem under "Know Your Zone." The county's tool searches both your evacuation zone and your flood zone. Type the address without punctuation.

Statewide: floridadisaster.org/knowyourzone will resolve any Florida address.

For the western communities. Coral Springs, Parkland, Coconut Creek, and most of the western suburbs are not in a hurricane evacuation zone. The City of Coral Springs states this plainly on its own emergency pages.

That is good news and it is also the source of a dangerous local complacency. Not being in an evacuation zone means you are not at meaningful risk from storm surge. It does not mean you are not at risk from wind, from tornadoes spun off the outer bands, from a week without power in August heat, or from freshwater flooding when 15 inches of rain falls on a canal system that is already at capacity.

Being outside the evacuation zone means you will probably shelter at home. It raises the stakes on everything in Parts 3 through 5 of this guide, not lowers them.

Evacuation zone and flood zone are not the same thing. This trips up an enormous number of South Florida homeowners, and it costs them money.

An evacuation zone tells you when local officials will order you to leave. It is about storm surge, the wall of ocean water a hurricane pushes ashore.

A flood zone is a FEMA designation about your property's risk of flooding from any source, including rainfall, poor drainage, and canal overflow. It determines whether your mortgage lender requires flood insurance.

You can be in no evacuation zone at all and still be in a flood zone that floods every hurricane season without a hurricane. Ask anyone in Fort Lauderdale who lived through the April 2023 rain event, which dropped more than two feet of water in a day and did not involve a tropical system at all.

Look up both. Write them down.

If you live in a mobile home or manufactured home, you evacuate. Every time, for every ordered evacuation level, regardless of what zone your address falls in. These structures are not built to survive hurricane force wind. This is not a suggestion, and under Florida law, failing to comply with an evacuation order is a violation.

Part 2: Register Now, Not Later

Three registries exist in South Florida. All three require sign-up in advance. All three are useless to you if you wait until a storm has a name.

Special Needs Shelter Registry. For residents who depend on electricity for medical equipment, or who have a medical condition requiring care beyond what a general population shelter can provide but that does not require hospitalization. These shelters are staffed by medical personnel and have backup power for essential equipment.

Broward County residents can find the application at Broward.org/AtRisk or call Broward County Emergency Management at 954-831-3902 (TTY 954-831-3940). Applications are available in English, Spanish, and Creole. Transportation to your assigned shelter can be arranged in advance as part of the application, coordinated through Broward County Paratransit.

Palm Beach County runs an equivalent program through its Division of Emergency Management. Register at discover.pbc.gov/oem.

Pre-register now. Do not assume you can walk up.

Vulnerable Population Registry. Separate from the special needs shelter. This one is for residents who are frail, disabled, or have health issues, and who intend to stay home during a storm. You register your location and contact information so that emergency workers and your city can plan a better recovery response in your neighborhood.

Important caveat that the county states plainly: the registry is not a guarantee of services. It is a planning tool, and each city uses the list differently. Register anyway.

Broward: call 311 or 954-831-4000, or contact your municipality directly.

FPL Medically Essential Service Program. If someone in your household depends on electrically powered medical equipment, register with FPL separately. This does not guarantee you get power back first, and FPL says so, but it puts you on a list and it gets you advance notice of planned outages. It is a five-minute call. Do it in July.

Pet-friendly shelters. Broward County has historically operated three pet-friendly general population shelters: Lyons Creek Middle School (Coconut Creek), Everglades High School (Miramar), and Falcon Cove Middle School (Weston). The list changes. Confirm the active list at Broward.org/Hurricane before any storm, because shelters open in phases and not all of them open for every event.

The rules are strict. Dogs, cats, domestic birds, rabbits, gerbils, guinea pigs, mice, and hamsters are accepted. Every pet must be in a carrier or crate. Every dog needs a collar and leash. You must show a rabies certificate for dogs and cats and be prepared to show your Broward County pet registration tag. Bring a week of food, water, bowls, litter, litter box, medication, and cleaning supplies.

Some pet shelter programs in Broward require in-person pre-registration and proof that you live in an evacuation zone. The Humane Society of Broward County runs a Pet Hurricane Hotline at 954-266-6871. Call in July and ask what this year's requirements are.

Service animals are permitted at any general population shelter under federal law and are not subject to the pet-friendly shelter restrictions.

Treat pet-friendly shelters as a last resort, especially if your animal is on medication or needs special handling.

Shelters are a last resort, period. They are safe. They are also crowded, loud, and uncomfortable. If you can arrange to stay with family or friends outside the evacuation zone, that is a better plan and it is free. Make those arrangements in July, not in the checkout line at Publix.

Part 3: The Supply Kit, and the Tax Change Almost Nobody Noticed

Florida officials recommend a seven-day supply of everything. Not three days. Seven.

That number comes from hard experience. After a major storm, power restoration in South Florida has historically taken a week or more in the hardest-hit grids. Grocery stores cannot open without power and cannot restock without clear roads. Gas stations run dry. Cell towers go down.

The big change: disaster supplies are now permanently tax free. For years, Florida ran two-week disaster preparedness sales tax holidays, one in late spring and one near the peak of the season. Everyone rushed the stores during the window, shelves emptied, and if you missed it you paid full price.

That is over. Under House Bill 7031, signed in June 2025 as part of a broader tax relief package, a long list of disaster preparedness items became permanently exempt from Florida sales tax, year-round, with no price caps and no shopping window to hit.

Items now permanently tax free include:

• Batteries in AA, AAA, C, D, 6-volt, and 9-volt sizes
• Smoke detectors and smoke alarms
• Carbon monoxide detectors
• Fire extinguishers
• Portable generators (gas or diesel, 10,000 running watts or less)
• Waterproof tarps and flexible waterproof sheeting up to 1,000 square feet
• Ground anchor systems and tie-down kits
• Gas or diesel fuel containers, five gallons or less
• U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jackets
• FDA-classified sunscreens
• EPA-registered insect repellent for skin

Bottled water, first aid kits, and most grocery food items were already exempt under existing Florida law.

The practical implication: you no longer have to buy everything at once. Spread it across the summer. Buy a generator in July when there is inventory and the price is not surging. Buy batteries when you are already at Target. There is no penalty for preparing early anymore, and no reward for waiting.

The kit.

Water. One gallon per person per day, seven days. A family of four needs 28 gallons. Add water for pets. Fill your bathtub before the storm as a non-drinking reserve for flushing toilets.

Food. Seven days of shelf-stable food that requires no cooking. Canned protein, peanut butter, crackers, granola bars, dried fruit, shelf-stable milk. A manual can opener, which is the single most commonly forgotten item in South Florida.

Power and light. Flashlights and headlamps, not candles. Candles cause house fires. Batteries in every size your devices need. A battery-powered or hand-crank NOAA weather radio. Portable phone battery packs, charged. A car charger. A 12-volt inverter if you have one.

Medical. Two weeks of every prescription. Call your pharmacy in July about early refills for hurricane season. Most insurers permit it ahead of a declared emergency. A full first aid kit. Copies of prescriptions and a written list of medications with dosages, in case you end up at a shelter or an urgent care that cannot reach your records.

Cash. ATMs and card readers do not work without power. Small bills.

Fuel. Fill every vehicle when a storm enters the Gulf or the Caribbean, not when the cone reaches you. Gas stations run out 48 hours before landfall, reliably, every time. Fill propane tanks too.

Cooling. Battery-powered fans. Coolers and ice. If you lose power, plan for days without air conditioning in August heat. This is the part people underestimate the most and it is the part that puts elderly neighbors in the hospital.

Baby and pet supplies. Formula, diapers, wipes, pet food, medications, carrier, leash, vaccination records.

Miscellaneous that people forget. Manual can opener. Duct tape. Work gloves. Rain gear. Closed-toe shoes you can walk through debris in. Trash bags. Wet wipes. A physical paper map, because your phone is a brick without a tower. Board games and books, because a week without power with children in the house is its own kind of storm.

Part 4: Sandbags, and What They Can and Cannot Do

The single most important thing to understand about sandbags. Sandbags divert water. They do not seal water out and they do nothing at all about wind. A wall of sandbags across a garage door or a low sliding door slows and redirects a few inches of sheet flow. It does not hold back storm surge and it will not save a house sitting in two feet of standing water.

Used correctly, they are cheap and effective. Used as a substitute for evacuating, they are worthless.

Sandbags come from your city, not the county. In Broward and Palm Beach, sandbag distribution is a municipal function, activated per storm. Sites open when a storm threatens, sometimes only 24 to 48 hours ahead, they operate first come first served, and they run out.

Nearly every city requires photo ID with proof of residency and enforces a per-household limit, typically five to ten bags. Some cities pre-fill and load the bags into your trunk. Others provide sand, empty bags, and nothing else, and you bring your own shovel.

What to do in July: find your city's public works or emergency management page, bookmark it, and sign up for that city's alert system. That is where the announcement will appear, and it will appear with very little notice.

Sites that have been used historically in the Friendly Scoop coverage area, as a general orientation only, since locations change every activation:

Do not drive to any of these addresses without confirming an active distribution first. Check your city's site or call the non-emergency line.

Coral Springs operates a Hurricane Call Center at 954-344-1001 before and after a storm for city-related questions. It is one of the most useful and least known numbers in northwest Broward.

How to actually fill a sandbag. Fill each bag one-half to two-thirds full and tie it at the top so it lies flat. A properly filled bag weighs 35 to 40 pounds. Overfilled bags and bags tied too low leave gaps that let water seep straight through the barrier you just built. An overfilled bag can weigh 70 to 75 pounds and one person cannot place it well.

Stack them like brickwork, staggering the seams, with the tied ends pointed upstream toward the water.

Part 5: Harden the House (July Work, Not September Work)

Openings are everything. Wind does not usually destroy a house by pushing on the walls. It destroys a house by finding an opening, entering, pressurizing the interior, and lifting the roof off from the inside. Protect the openings and everything else gets easier.

Windows and doors. Impact-rated glass or shutters on every opening. Tape does nothing. Tape has never done anything. It does not prevent breakage and it turns broken glass into larger, more dangerous shards.

Garage door. The largest opening in most South Florida homes and the most commonly overlooked. A failed garage door is one of the most common paths to catastrophic loss. Wind-rated garage doors and bracing kits exist and are relatively cheap compared to a new roof.

Roof. Homes permitted before 2002 generally predate the strengthened Florida Building Code that followed Andrew. If your roof was installed before then, get a wind mitigation inspection and find out how the roof deck is attached and whether roof-to-wall connections use clips or straps.

My Safe Florida Home. The state runs a program that provides free wind mitigation inspections and matching grants for hurricane hardening: opening protection, roof improvements, roof-to-wall connections, and secondary water resistance. The state has historically matched at two dollars for every one dollar the homeowner contributes, up to a $10,000 state contribution, with additional provisions for low-income applicants.

Eligibility rules, income tiers, funding levels, and application windows change year to year and funding runs out. There is also a separate condominium pilot program where the association applies rather than individual unit owners.

Two rules that disqualify people every single cycle:

• Do not start work before you have written grant approval. Not a contract, not a deposit, not an order for materials. Starting early voids the application automatically.
• Verify the contractor's license yourself at MyFloridaLicense.com. The state will not do it for you.

Do not take a contractor's word for the current rules. Go to mysafeflhome.com and read the current cycle's requirements.

Even if you do not qualify for a grant, the wind mitigation inspection itself is worth doing. That report is what you hand to your insurance carrier to confirm you are receiving every available discount on the hurricane portion of your premium. For many South Florida homes, that document is worth four figures a year.

Trees and yard. Trim now. Once a hurricane watch is issued, it is too late. Debris piled at the curb becomes projectiles, and municipal bulk collection stops when the storm approaches.

Broward and Palm Beach cities have tree trimming ordinances and, in many municipalities, permit requirements for trees on non-single-family properties. Contractor-generated trimmings usually are not eligible for bulk pickup and must be hauled by the contractor. Check your city's rules before you cut.

When a warning is issued: bring in patio furniture, planters, grills, bicycles, garbage carts, pool equipment, and anything else that is not bolted down. Anchor what you cannot bring inside. A patio umbrella at 110 miles per hour is a javelin.

Part 6: The Insurance Homework Nobody Does Until It Is Too Late

This is the section that costs South Florida homeowners the most money, and it is entirely a July problem.

Flood insurance has a 30-day waiting period. Standard homeowners insurance in Florida does not cover flood damage. Not from storm surge, not from rainfall, not from a canal that came over its bank. Flood is a separate policy, through the National Flood Insurance Program or a private carrier.

New NFIP policies generally do not take effect for 30 days. If you buy flood coverage the day a storm enters the Caribbean, you are not covered for that storm. If you want flood coverage for the peak of the 2026 season, the decision has to be made in July.

Roughly one in four flood insurance claims comes from properties outside high-risk flood zones.

Know your hurricane deductible. Florida hurricane deductibles are usually expressed as a percentage of your dwelling coverage, not a flat dollar amount. A 2 percent hurricane deductible on a home insured for $600,000 is a $12,000 out-of-pocket cost before your carrier pays a dollar.

Pull your declarations page. Find the number. Make sure you can actually cover it. Many homeowners discover their deductible for the first time while standing in a house with a hole in the roof.

Replacement cost versus actual cash value. Actual cash value pays you depreciated value. A ten-year-old roof gets paid like a ten-year-old roof. Replacement cost pays to replace it. Know which one you have, especially on the roof, where many Florida carriers have shifted to actual cash value schedules for older roofs.

Photograph everything, this week. Walk the house with your phone. Video every room, open every closet and cabinet, narrate what things are. Photograph serial numbers on appliances and electronics. Get the roof, the exterior, the garage, the shed. Upload it all to cloud storage, not just your phone.

After a loss, the burden of proving what you owned falls on you. The people who get paid fastest and fully are the ones with a time-stamped video from before the storm.

Documents. Insurance policies, deeds, titles, birth certificates, passports, social security cards, medical records, prescriptions, mortgage statements, tax returns. Scan them, store them in the cloud, and keep physical copies in a waterproof, portable container that you can carry in one hand.

Part 7: Condo and HOA Owners, This Part Is Different for You

South Florida's condo market is in the middle of a structural reset, and hurricane season sits right on top of it. If you own a unit, your risk profile is not the same as a single-family homeowner's.

Your association's policy does not cover your unit's interior. The master policy generally covers the building structure and common elements. Your HO-6 policy covers what is inside your walls, your improvements, your belongings, and often your share of a loss assessment. Read both. Most owners have never read either.

Loss assessment coverage matters more than it used to. If the building sustains damage that exceeds the association's coverage or deductible, the cost gets passed to owners as a special assessment. Loss assessment coverage on your HO-6 is inexpensive and can be the difference between a manageable bill and a financial emergency.

Milestone inspections and structural reserve studies are now part of your storm risk. Florida's post-Surfside building safety law requires milestone inspections for older buildings and structural integrity reserve studies that restrict a board's ability to waive reserves. Buildings that have deferred maintenance are being forced to confront it, and a building carrying deferred structural work is a building with less margin in a hurricane.

If you are considering a condo purchase this summer, this is not a side issue. Ask for the milestone inspection report, the reserve study, the last three years of board minutes, and the association's current insurance declarations. We covered the market consequences of all of this in The Condo Reckoning: What Florida's Building Safety Law Is Still Doing to South Florida's Market.

Ask your board four questions before August:

• What is the association's hurricane deductible, and what are the current reserves against it?
• What is the building's shutter or impact glass status on common elements and unprotected openings?
• What is the post-storm plan for elevators, generators, water pressure, and access if the building loses power for a week?
• Has the association applied to the My Safe Florida Condominium Pilot Program?

If nobody can answer, that is the answer.

Part 8: If You Rent

Your landlord's insurance covers the building. It covers exactly none of your belongings.

Renters insurance in South Florida is inexpensive, usually a fraction of what people assume, and it covers your possessions plus, in most policies, additional living expenses if the unit becomes uninhabitable. That last piece is the one that matters. If the building is unlivable for three weeks, someone has to pay for the hotel.

Renters should also confirm whether the policy excludes flood, because most do, and ask the landlord directly whether the unit is in an evacuation zone. Do not assume the landlord will tell you unprompted.

Part 9: If You Own a Boat

South Florida has more registered vessels than almost anywhere in the country, and boat owners face a compressed timeline that most homeowners never think about.

The bridges close before you think they will. The U.S. Coast Guard Captain of the Port sets hurricane port conditions on a fixed schedule ahead of sustained gale force winds of 39 miles per hour or more:

• Whiskey: gale force winds possible within 72 hours
• X-Ray: within 48 hours
• Yankee: within 24 hours, vessel movement restricted
• Zulu: within 12 hours, vessel movement restricted

Drawbridges may stop opening for vessel traffic once sustained winds reach 25 miles per hour or once an evacuation is underway. About eight hours before sustained gale force winds arrive, most bridges lock down and do not open again until the weather passes.

Translation: if your plan is to move the boat up a canal or to an inland marina, you have to move it days before the storm, not the morning of. Boats get trapped behind locked bridges every single season.

Port Everglades publishes the Coast Guard's Marine Safety Information Bulletin on hurricane port readiness every summer. Read it at porteverglades.net under Emergency Updates.

What to do.

• Trailerable boats: pull them, and store them somewhere that does not flood. Not in the evacuation zone. Not under a tree.
• Boats staying in the water: double your lines, use chafe protection, strip everything removable including canvas, biminis, cushions, electronics, and life rings. Remove the EPIRB, because a loose EPIRB that activates in a debris field pulls Coast Guard search and rescue away from actual people in distress.

Read your marina contract now. Many South Florida marinas require vessels to be removed when a hurricane warning is issued, and the liability falls on you. Many insurance policies contain a named-storm haul-out provision that reimburses part of the cost of hauling and blocking the boat. Some require it. Find out which yours is in July.

We covered the waterfront in Best Places to Watch July 4th Fireworks by Boat. The same ramps, marinas, and fuel docks are the ones you will be competing for when a storm is 72 hours out.

Part 10: Generators, Power, and the Thing That Actually Kills People

The most common cause of death after a Florida hurricane is not the storm itself. It is carbon monoxide poisoning from generators, and it is heat.

Generators go outside. At least 20 feet from the house, away from windows, doors, and vents. Never in a garage, never on a porch, never in a carport, not even with the door open. Carbon monoxide is odorless and it kills people in their sleep.

Install carbon monoxide detectors with battery backup. They are now permanently sales tax exempt in Florida. There is no reason not to have them.

Never backfeed a generator into your home's wiring through a dryer outlet. It can kill utility line workers and it can burn your house down. Use a properly installed transfer switch or run appliances on extension cords.

Store fuel safely and legally. Approved containers, five gallons or less if you want the tax exemption, stored outside the living space, away from any ignition source.

Stay at least 30 feet from downed power lines. Assume every one of them is live. Never touch anything that is touching a line.

Reporting an outage to FPL:

Call 1-800-4-OUTAGE (1-800-468-8243), available 24/7.

Report online at FPL.com/outage.

Text "App" to MyFPL (69375) to get the mobile app.

Track restoration at FPL.com/powertracker.

Call the same number immediately to report a downed line or a leaning pole.

How FPL restores power, and why your street may be last. FPL restores in a fixed sequence: power plants, transmission lines, and substations first, because nothing else works without them. Then critical facilities such as hospitals, police and fire stations, water treatment plants, and 911 centers. Then the main thoroughfares that host supermarkets, pharmacies, and gas stations. Then progressively smaller neighborhood circuits, converging last on the hardest-hit and most isolated areas.

If you live at the end of a dead-end residential lateral, you are structurally near the end of that list. Plan for it. In the first 12 to 24 hours after a major storm your area may show as "under assessment" with no estimated restoration time at all, because crews have not physically reached it yet.

Report your outage even if the map already shows it. Utilities use customer reports to find outages that smart meters cannot see.

Unplug sensitive electronics while the power is out, so a voltage spike on restoration does not destroy them.

Plan for heat. Losing power in August in South Florida is a medical risk for elderly residents, infants, and anyone with a chronic condition. Know where you will go if the house becomes dangerously hot. Public libraries frequently reopen first with air conditioning, charging stations, and public computers on a first-come basis. Cooling centers open post-storm. FPL sets up relief sites with water, ice, and mobile charging stations.

Check on your elderly neighbors. Twice.

Part 11: The Storm Timeline

Watch versus warning. A watch means conditions are possible in your area. Hurricane and tropical storm watches are typically issued 48 hours before the anticipated onset of tropical storm force winds. A warning means conditions are expected. Warnings are typically issued 36 hours out.

The critical detail: tropical storm force winds, 39 miles per hour and up, arrive well before the eye. Once they arrive, everything stops. Bridges close. Crews come off the roads. Emergency services suspend response. Your working window ends when the wind starts, not when the hurricane arrives.

5 days out. Storm is in the Caribbean or eastern Atlantic. Review your plan. Check prescriptions. Confirm where you would go. Nothing dramatic.

72 hours out. Fill the vehicles. Fill propane. Get cash. Buy the perishables you will actually eat. Charge every battery bank. Move the boat. Confirm your evacuation zone against the actual order, not against what you remember.

48 hours out. Put up shutters. Bring in everything from the yard. Watch for your city's sandbag announcement. Fill the bathtub. Freeze water bottles and jugs to buy your refrigerator extra hours. Take the "before" photos and video of the house.

24 hours out. If you are evacuating, you are already gone. Traffic on I-95, I-75, and the Turnpike is the worst part of any evacuation and it is entirely a function of when you left. Book hotels early, because rooms along the interstate corridors sell out within hours of an order.

If you are staying, you are done working outside. Charge everything one more time.

During. Stay in an interior room, away from windows. The eye passing over is not the end. The back half of the eyewall arrives with wind from the opposite direction, and that is what brings down the trees that survived the first half. Do not go outside during the calm.

Part 12: Alerts, Information, and Who to Call

Sign up before the season, not during the storm.

• AlertBroward for Broward County emergency notifications
• AlertPBC for Palm Beach County emergency notifications
• CivicReady text alerts and the My Boca App for City of Boca Raton residents
• Your own city's notification system, whatever it is called
• NOAA weather radio, battery powered, for when cell service fails
• VHF channel 16 for boaters
• FL511 or FL511.com for road conditions and evacuation route status
• nhc.noaa.gov for the actual forecast, rather than the screenshot your cousin posted

Watch the cone, but understand what it is. The cone shows the probable track of the center of the storm, roughly two-thirds of the time. It says nothing about the size of the wind field, and impacts routinely extend far outside it. Never focus on the skinny black line.

Schools and childcare. When Broward County Public Schools close for a storm, city-run childcare and after-school programs close with them, and resuming them depends on damage assessments. Palm Beach County operates the same way. Both districts build severe weather makeup days into the calendar for exactly this reason.

For 2026-27, both Broward and Palm Beach start school on Monday, August 10, which lands right at the front edge of the peak of the season. Build a plan now for who watches your children if schools close in week two, because they have before.

Part 13: After the Storm

Do not go outside until officials say it is safe. Downed lines, unstable trees, standing water hiding open storm drains, and debris that will go through a shoe.

Report your damage. Broward County runs a Home Damage Assessment Program that helps first responders identify the hardest-hit areas before assessment teams can canvass. Report through the Broward County Emergency Hotline at 311, or 954-831-4000 from outside the county. Palm Beach County residents should report through the county's emergency information line and their municipality.

Document before you clean up. Photograph and video everything before you move a single piece of debris or make a single temporary repair. Then make reasonable temporary repairs to prevent further damage, because your policy requires it, and keep every receipt. Tarp the roof. Do not let water keep coming in and then argue about it later.

Food and water safety. A refrigerator holds safe temperature for about four hours if you keep the door closed. A full freezer holds for roughly 48 hours, a half-full freezer for about 24. When in doubt, throw it out. FPL has a claims process for food and equipment loss in certain circumstances.

If a boil water notice is issued, it applies to drinking, cooking, brushing teeth, and ice.

Debris. Separate your debris piles the way your city asks: vegetation, construction and demolition, appliances, household hazardous waste, electronics. Mixed piles get skipped, and you will wait weeks for a second pass.

Scams: the second disaster. Contractor fraud after a hurricane is an industry in South Florida. Watch for out-of-state plates, door-to-door solicitation, demands for large deposits, pressure to sign an assignment of benefits, and anyone who offers to waive your deductible, which is insurance fraud and makes you a participant in it.

Florida law gives you real protections. Use them:

• Contracts for repair work include a three-day right to cancel. Read for that language.
• If a contractor collects more than 10 percent of the contract up front, Florida law requires them to apply for a permit within 30 days and start work within 90 days.
• Suppliers and subcontractors who do not get paid by your contractor can place a lien on your property, even if you already paid the contractor in full. Ask for lien releases.
• Never pay the full amount up front. Get multiple written estimates. Verify insurance directly with the carrier.

Verify every license at MyFloridaLicense.com before money changes hands. Report unlicensed contractors to DBPR at 1-866-532-1440.

Price gouging. During a declared state of emergency, Florida law prohibits unconscionable price increases on essential commodities including food, water, ice, gas, hotel rooms, lumber, and equipment. The state compares the price charged during the emergency against the average price over the prior 30 days and looks for a "gross disparity." Violations carry civil penalties of $1,000 each, up to $25,000 for multiple violations in a single 24-hour period.

Report it to the Florida Attorney General's Office:

• Call 1-866-9-NO-SCAM (1-866-966-7226)
• Report online at MyFloridaLegal.com
• Download the free NO SCAM app

Document with photos of the price, receipts, and the product name and quantity.

Legal help. After a federal disaster declaration, The Florida Bar Young Lawyers Division activates a Disaster Relief Hotline at 1-866-550-2929, which provides basic civil legal services to people who cannot otherwise afford representation.

FEMA. FEMA assistance becomes available only after a federal disaster declaration, and applications are accepted within a defined window from the declaration date. Register at DisasterAssistance.gov.

Do not wait on FEMA to file your insurance claim. They are separate processes, and your carrier is the first stop.

Part 14: If You Own a Business

Everything above, plus:

• Business interruption coverage is not automatic and often excludes losses caused by a power outage that originates off your premises. Read the policy.
• Photograph inventory and equipment, with serial numbers, the same way you photographed the house.
• Back up your records off site or in the cloud.
• Know your city's re-entry rules for business owners after an evacuation. Some issue re-entry passes in advance.
• Post-storm price gouging rules apply to you as a seller. Know where the line is.

Port Everglades keeps at least a week of gasoline reserves on site and continues landside distribution to retail stations as long as weather permits, which is why gas returns faster than most people expect once roads clear.

Quick Reference

The One-Hour Version

If you read nothing else in this guide, do these seven things this week:

• Look up your evacuation zone and your flood zone. Write both down.
• Pull your insurance declarations page and find your hurricane deductible.
• Decide on flood insurance now, because of the 30-day wait.
• Video every room in your house and upload it to the cloud.
• Pre-register for a special needs shelter if anyone in your household needs one, and sign up for AlertBroward or AlertPBC.
• Buy the generator, the batteries, the carbon monoxide detector, and the tarps while they are in stock and tax free.
• Bookmark your city's sandbag and emergency management page.

That is one hour of work in July. It is the difference between managing a storm and being managed by one.

The Friendly Scoop covers Broward and Palm Beach County. This guide is for general information and is not legal, insurance, or emergency management advice. Program rules, shelter lists, and distribution sites change. During an active storm, always follow the instructions of Broward County Emergency Management, Palm Beach County Emergency Management, and the National Hurricane Center.

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