Blown Away by the Waves: Navigating the Challenges of Assessing Property Damage from High Winds and Flooding
Assessing property damage after a natural disaster like a severe storm or flood can be a daunting task. The interplay of high winds and flooding often results in complex damage scenarios that pose unique challenges for property claims adjusters. This article aims to shed light on these challenges and provide some practical tips for navigating this tricky terrain.
The first hurdle is distinguishing between wind damage and water damage. Wind can tear off roofs, shatter windows, and cause trees to fall on structures, while water can lead to issues like mold growth, structural instability, and ruined possessions. While some damages are easy to categorize, others can be more ambiguous. For example, when a roof is blown off and subsequent rain floods the house, assigning the damage to wind or water becomes tricky.
Determining the cause and extent of damages is another challenge when properties are subject to both high winds and flooding. For instance, whether the damage was caused by hydrostatic forces (standing water), hydrodynamic forces (moving water), or impact forces (debris carried by wind or water) could significantly influence the claim's outcome.
Different insurance policies cover wind and flood damages, which complicates the assessment process. Homeowners' insurance typically covers wind damage but not flood damage, which requires separate flood insurance. This distinction necessitates a detailed and accurate assessment to ensure the correct coverages apply.
Moreover, assessing damage isn't always immediate. While damage from wind or hurricanes may be readily visible and assessed through windshield surveys, damages from floods may require more time to become apparent.
Wind Damage
Hurricanes are among nature's most destructive forces. With winds that can exceed 150 miles per hour, they have the ability to cause significant damage to structures. As a property adjuster, understanding the ways in which hurricane winds cause damage is crucial for distinguishing these damages from those caused by other factors such as flooding or normal wear and tear.
Hurricanes can impact structures in several ways. The most common is high winds exert pressure on the exterior of buildings, which can lead to outer wall damage and even structural failure if the building is not adequately designed to withstand such forces. Moreover, the debris carried by these winds can act as projectiles, causing additional damage.
Types of Wind Damage
Shingle Damage: High winds can rip shingles off roofs, exposing the underlying structures to rain and leading to water damage.
Window and Door Damage: Windows and doors are the weakest components of the wall structure. These are normally the second points of failure after shingle damage.
Outer Wall Damage: Wind pressure can cause walls to crack or fail, particularly if the construction materials are not wind-resistant.
Damage to Structural Elements: Extreme winds can lead to the failure of key structural elements, such as beams and columns, especially in older buildings not designed to current wind load standards.
It's important to note that these damages differ significantly from those caused by flooding, which typically result in diagonal cracks due to the lateral forces involved. Similarly, normal wear and tear rarely results in the extensive damage seen with hurricanes.
As property adjusters, we must be familiar with and understand potential wind damages. This involves at minimum a working knowledge of wind loads based on the building's location, shape, and exposure category. We can then determine the structural elements that were designed into the structure to withstand these loads and distinguish wind damage from other causes of damage.
Wind damages, often involve damage to windows and doors, as these are often the first points of failure during a hurricane. Roof enhancements, such as hurricane straps, can also help secure the roof to the rest of the structure and prevent it from experiencing catastrophic failure.
Flood Damage
When it comes to hurricanes, it's not just the high winds that cause destruction - storm surge and flood waters can be equally, if not more, devastating. As a property adjuster, understanding how these factors impact structures is crucial for distinguishing this type of damage from those caused by other factors like high winds.
The Impact of Storm Surge and Flood Waters on Structures
Storm surge is a rise in sea level that occurs during hurricanes, pushing large volumes of water onto the shore. This, combined with heavy rainfall, can result in significant flooding. These waters exert immense pressure on building structures, leading to potential damages or even complete failure.
Types of Water Damage
Outer Wall Damage: Water pressure can weaken walls, particularly if they are made from non-water-resistant materials. Over time, this can lead to wall failure.
Inner Wall Damage: Exposure to flood waters can damage both the interior cladding, such as: drywall, paneling and plaster, as well as the electrical outlets, switches, wiring and HVAC ductwork.
Damage to Structural Elements: Prolonged exposure to water can cause critical structural elements like beams and columns to deteriorate, compromising the building's overall stability.
Foundation Damage: Floodwaters can erode the soil around a building's foundation, causing it to crack, shift or even collapse.
Unlike wind damage, which often affects the upper parts of a structure like the roof or windows, flood damage typically impacts the lower levels. Normal wear and tear, on the other hand, results in gradual deterioration over time and affects different parts of the structure depending on their use and exposure to normal environmental conditions.
Employee Experts
When making this determination, and I can't stress this enough, it may be necessary to employee experts such as: structural engineers, civil engineers and forensic meteorologists. These experts can help you determine what is wind damage and what is flood damage. You or your company should have a list of trusted experts in these fields for you to call upon.
In such cases, the expertise of structural engineers, forensic meteorologists, and civil engineers becomes invaluable.
Structural engineers can analyze the physical damage done to a building and make educated assessments about whether wind or water was the likely culprit. Their understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of different building materials and construction techniques provides a solid foundation for their evaluations.
Forensic meteorologists, on the other hand, can provide detailed reports on the weather conditions at the time of the event. They can determine the speed and direction of the wind, the timing and intensity of the storm surge, and other meteorological factors that could have contributed to the damage.
Civil engineers also play a critical role, particularly when it comes to assessing damage to infrastructure like roads and bridges, as well as to the land itself. Erosion, landslides, and other land changes caused by a hurricane can impact structures and require a civil engineer's expertise to evaluate.
J.S. Held LLC (Jon Held) , Addison Riley, LLC (Jon W. Pruitt and Greg Kelly PE, SE, LEED AP), Tim Coleman, PhD, etc are some of the experts I highly recommend to employee for these purposes. These trusted experts have built solid reputations as being both unbiased and extremely thorough in their assessments. They may not tell you what you want to hear, but they will definitely tell you what you need to hear. This protects both the insured and the carrier.
Final Thoughts
Differentiating between property damage caused by high winds and storm surge flooding can be a complex task, yet it's an essential aspect of the claims adjustment process. High winds often inflict damage on the upper parts of a structure, such as roofs and windows, whereas storm surge flooding typically impacts the lower levels and foundations. However, the effects of these two forces can overlap, making it challenging to determine the primary cause of damage.
While it's important for property owners and insurance adjusters to have a basic understanding of how to differentiate between wind and flood damage, consulting with professionals from relevant fields is often necessary for a comprehensive and accurate assessment. This multidisciplinary approach ensures that all aspects of the damage are thoroughly evaluated, allowing for a fair and accurate insurance claim process.
Sources
Bill Simmons, AIC, CPI, CCI, CASA is the owner of L2 Insurance Consulting LLC, and he is an industry recognized expert relating to insurance claims and claim related damage. Bill has worked in every aspect of insurance claims from automobile liability and subrogation to property claim specialist, and he has worked both aspects of insurance claims, for carriers as a staff adjuster and as an independent adjuster. Bill also serves as an expert witness in the insurance claim legal process. Bill lives in Panama City, FL with his wife, Amanda and their two sons, Layton and Lucas.
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