Hurricane and Named Storm Prep

A named storm is the one weather event you get days of warning for. That warning is the whole advantage, and it gets wasted by starting on the last day.

The timeline, not the checklist

• Days out. Decide the trigger for stopping work and for securing the site, and tell everyone what it is. Order what you will need — fuel, water, plywood, straps, sandbags — before every yard in the county is out of it.
• Before the wind builds. Everything loose is secured or removed, because there is no securing anything once it is blowing.
• Before you leave. Photograph the site. It is worth an hour when the insurance conversation starts.
• Do not come back until the site is declared safe, not when the sun comes out.

Everything loose is a projectile

• Scaffold sheeting and debris netting come down. A sheeted scaffold is a sail, and it takes the scaffold with it.
• Plywood, forms, sheet goods, trash, cones, drums, portable toilets, gang boxes — secured, laid flat, or gone.
• Loose material on roofs and upper floors is the worst of it. It leaves the building and arrives somewhere else at speed.
• Cranes follow the manufacturer's storm procedure. Tower cranes are normally put into weathervane so the jib can turn with the wind — never locked. Mobile cranes are boomed down.
• Trenches and excavations. Assume they fill and collapse. Fence them, and expect to have a competent person re-inspect before anyone goes near one afterwards.

The cleanup is where people get hurt

More injuries come out of the days after a storm than the storm itself, and the crew doing it is tired, hot, and working somewhere that has been rearranged.

• Every downed line is live. Every one, including the one lying in water, and including the one the utility "said was dead".
• Generators outdoors only, away from openings. Carbon monoxide kills people after every hurricane, indoors, with a generator running in a garage.
• Backfeed. Never connect a generator to a building through an outlet — it energises the service and can kill a lineman working to restore the neighbourhood.
• Chainsaws in storm debris is the most dangerous saw work there is: wood under tension, tangled trunks, unstable footing, and hidden fencing and metal. Chaps, and never alone.
• Water is not water. Assume sewage, fuel, chemicals and sharps. Boots, gloves, and wash before eating.
• Heat. Power is out, there is no shade, and everyone is working long days. This is when heat illness kills.
• Structures are not sound until somebody qualified says so. Wet drywall, sagging ceilings, undermined foundations.

The people

Some of the crew will have damage at home. Ask, and mean it, before assigning the longest days to the person who has none of a house left.