After a Windstorm: A Safe Exterior Home Inspection Checklist
The wind has stopped. The hazards have not. A line down across the drive, a tree that has lost half its roots, a garage door pulled out of its tracks: each comes before a missing shingle, and each is settled before anyone walks the property with a notebook. The order that works is hazards, then openings, then the building, then the record. And the part of the house that is damaged is not always the part that failed.
What outranks the damage
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the electrical rule first: never touch a fallen power line, and do not drive through standing water where downed lines lie in it. A line that has come down on a car is a reason to stay inside it.
Two more hazards come before any inspection. The agency’s instruction for a damaged building is to stay out of it until a building inspector or other government authority has examined it and certified it as safe, and to leave immediately on hearing unusual noises that suggest a structure may fall, or on smelling gas or suspecting a leak. Where the power is out, its rule for the equipment that follows is that generators, pressure washers and grills run outdoors only, with a generator at least 20 feet from the house — and never with electrical tools used while standing in water.
None of that postpones the look; it sets the order.
Trees: what the state’s extension service asks you to weigh
A tree that is still standing is not a tree that is sound, and Washington State University Extension is careful about who is qualified to tell the difference. Its gardener’s handbook introduces tree risk assessment through three factors: the presence of a defect, the presence of a target that a failure would damage, and the external forces that might make failure happen, with high winds and ice storms named among the stresses.
The defect is the part a household can see least. The handbook says a defect may be plainly visible, such as a broken branch or dead wood in the canopy, or it may be hidden — root damage or decay underground, or decay beneath the bark. A tree that leafed out in June can be one that lost its anchorage in October, which is why the extension service directs the assessment to an arborist holding a Tree Risk Assessment Qualification.
Two cautions belong with that. The handbook warns tree owners to be wary of anyone offering an unsolicited risk assessment, particularly one presented as an imminent threat, and advises a second opinion from a qualified arborist before agreeing to a removal; the qualification can be verified through the International Society of Arboriculture. The line rule is absolute in its wording: within ten feet of utility lines, gardeners must not perform pruning or removal work, which goes to a certified utility arborist. Removing a large tree should be left to professional arborists.
The opening that fails first
Damage after a windstorm is usually read from the outside in, beginning with whatever is visibly missing. The research points the other way. The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety describes the garage door as the largest opening in a home and one of its most vulnerable areas: high winds push the door inward, pressure builds inside, and that pressure pushes up on the roof and out on the surrounding walls. Its testing and its field observations after hurricanes and tornadoes found that once a garage door is compromised, damage to the roof, the adjacent walls, or both becomes more likely — the reason the institute calls the door a damage amplifier.
The Building America Solution Center, reproducing federal guidance, states the general case the same way: openings such as doors, windows and garage doors are weak points in a home’s exterior, and failure of a window or door can allow high winds to enter and overpressurize the home, causing roofs or walls to fail.
What that means on the ground is that the door is a diagnostic, not a detail. A door that has left its tracks, panels bent inward, a door that no longer meets the floor, a window frame standing proud of the siding, weatherstrip torn away from a jamb: any of those is a finding to record and report in the same conversation as the roof, because the roof and wall damage may be the consequence rather than the cause. Do not operate a damaged garage door to test it; a door under load can come down.
One pass per elevation
The National Park Service’s preservation brief on maintaining building exteriors treats a significant weather event — a severe rainstorm or unusually high winds, in its wording — as the trigger for inspecting all building features, and it sets a walking order for the job: from the roof down to the foundation, one elevation at a time, moving around the building in a consistent direction. That order is worth keeping because it produces a record that can be compared with the next one. It does not rank the findings, though, so the ranking comes from the hazard: anything that has opened, moved, or is letting water in goes first.
| Stop | What counts as a change | Who owns the repair |
|---|---|---|
| Openings — windows, doors, garage door | Cracked or missing glass, a frame loose in the wall, a gap where frame meets siding, a garage door out of its tracks or no longer meeting the floor | A glazier or a door technician. A damaged garage door stays shut |
| Roof | Missing, cracked or lifted shingles, debris on the slope, anything changed at the flashings — read from the ground and never from the roof | The roofing trade, after the state’s contractor check. The roof’s own ground-level pass is its own checklist |
| Walls and trim | Siding lifted, cracked or holed by debris, a soffit hanging loose, staining beneath a window or a projection | A siding or carpentry contractor, once the opening above it is closed |
| Roof drainage | Gutter runs hanging away from the fascia, downspouts pulled off the wall, shingle granules and debris in the run | The gutter trade. A system that still overflows at the next rain is a diagnosis of its own |
| Projections — deck, porch, fence, carport | Posts out of plumb, lifted boards, a ledger pulling away from the wall, fence panels leaning | A deck or fence contractor. A deck that has moved stays out of use until it is assessed, and deck maintenance has its own order |
| The ground at the foundation | Soil scoured away, new ponding, a grade that now slopes toward the wall | The drainage question first. Water standing there in the next rain is its own diagnosis |
Two rows are worth a second walk. Water that has entered at an opening rarely stops there: it shows as a mark on the inside face of the wall, a stain at the base of a casing, or a soft patch of sheathing, and those are the observations that turn a repair into a claim. And the ground row is the one most often skipped — a scoured bed or a new low spot beside the wall is how the next heavy rain gets into a foundation.
Who shows up, and who they work for
Washington’s Office of the Insurance Commissioner states the problem plainly: after any disaster, people may show up claiming to be contractors, cleanup crews or insurance professionals, and some may not be licensed, bonded, or even legally allowed to work in the state. Its advice is to confirm the role before agreeing to work or handing over money, and it names four kinds of adjuster.
| Adjuster | Who they work for | Licensed in Washington? | Who pays them |
|---|---|---|---|
| Staff adjuster | Your insurance company | Not required to be licensed | The insurer. You pay nothing |
| Independent adjuster | The insurance company, which hires them | Yes, by the commissioner’s office | The insurer. You pay nothing |
| Public adjuster | You, if you choose to hire one | Yes, and bonded | You, as a percentage of the settlement |
| Emergency adjuster | May work during a declared emergency | Must register with the office if not licensed here | The office does not say |
The office’s red flag is worth memorizing: someone who refuses to show credentials, or who pressures you to sign quickly. A contractor’s, a cleanup firm’s or a debris hauler’s license can be looked up through the state, and a contractor’s registration is checked through the Department of Labor and Industries — those checks are set out here.
The debris, and who pays to move it
The tree that came down can be the largest single item on the property, and the commissioner’s office answers the payment question directly. Debris removal is part of a homeowners policy, it states, but it applies only when a covered peril — windstorm among them — has damaged a covered structure such as the home, the garage or the fence. Damage from an excluded cause such as flood or earth movement brings no removal coverage under the homeowners policy.
The limit sits in a place most owners never read. Debris removal usually appears under Section I, Additional Coverages, and it is paid as part of repairing or rebuilding the home: where the combined cost of removal and repair exceeds the dwelling limit, the policy usually provides up to an additional 5 percent of that limit for debris, and only once the Coverage A limit is exhausted. The office advises reading that subsection before comparing policies, because two otherwise similar policies can differ substantially in cleanup coverage.
Where the debris may legally go is a separate question from who pays to move it, and Washington’s rules on yard waste and burning are set out in the fall checklist rather than here.
The next useful action
Make the pass in the order above on a dry day, and again in the next heavy rain, writing down what you saw and where you stood to see it. Then put the findings in the order the water would: the opening before the wall, the wall before the finish, the roof before the ceiling it is wetting. The roof has its own ground-level checklist for the part of this that belongs to the roof, and the annual calendar at the seasonal-maintenance pillar places the rest of the year around it.