86 percent of homeowners think they have their hurricane preparedness under control

Hurricane Preparedness - Hurricane Laura as a category 4

Many property owners aren’t taking into consideration the additional challenges from COVID-19.

Even after the devastation left behind by the major storms last week, most homeowners feel they have made adequate hurricane preparedness efforts, according to a recent survey.

When Hurricane Laura reached the US Gulf Coast, it struck as a highly powerful category 4.

According to the research conducted by ValuePenguin, most homeowners – 86 percent – feel that the hurricane preparedness steps they have taken are enough. However, thousands of people who were in the path of last week’s storms found that they were not expecting what is involved in extreme weather in 2020 with the pandemic crisis still ongoing.

Interestingly, even though 86 percent of homeowners feel they’re ready, the same research also showed that one in three property owners hadn’t actually made any efforts to get ready in case of these extreme storms.

Among the surveyed homeowners, 45 percent of those in states prone to hurricanes were unaware of the amount of insurance coverage they would need to fully protect their properties. Moreover, many of them had severely underestimated the size of the costs that could accumulate as a result of a hurricane and of the size of the costs of flood damage repairs.

Over a third of those in high risk areas believe they have hurricane preparedness that isn’t there.

While most homeowners living in high risk areas do understand that the chance of experiencing flooding due to these storms is serious, more than one third wrongly believe their homeowners insurance policy will provide them with the coverage they need. The standard homeowners’ insurance policy does not include coverage for the type of overland flooding that occurs from these storms.

Similarly, 29 percent of renters residing in high risk areas wrongly believe that their contents insurance policies will cover them against damaged possessions from overland flooding.

Almost half of people in the United States recognized that COVID-19 has thrown new concerns into their hurricane preparedness efforts. This was particularly true of the cost of flooding repairs among those with lower household incomes. It also raised concerns regarding the way storm damage could affect the ability to comply with stay-at-home requirements and to remain adequately socially/physically Hurricane Preparedness - Hurricane Laura as a category 4distanced at shelters. Among those who had already faced these storms in 2020, 73 percent had already had wages affected by the pandemic crisis.

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