Hurricane Season Readiness for Small and Midsize Businesses

Most small businesses start their hurricane planning when the forecast cone shows up on the evening news. By then the useful work is largely behind them. Plywood and generators are sold out, fuel lines are long, and a flood insurance policy bought that afternoon generally will not take effect for 30 days. The storm has not arrived, but the window for preparing cheaply has closed.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, with the climatological peak in early to mid-September. That gives a small or midsize firm a predictable calendar: a few weeks of real preparation before the season, then a countdown that starts about five days before any given storm. This piece follows that calendar, because hurricane readiness is mostly a matter of doing the right things at the right hour.

First, read the forecast like a planner

Three distinctions trip businesses up every year.

Watch versus warning. The National Hurricane Center issues a hurricane watch when hurricane conditions are possible, generally 48 hours before tropical-storm-force winds are expected, and a warning when they are expected, generally 36 hours ahead. Note the anchor. The clock runs to the arrival of tropical-storm-force winds (39 mph and up), not to landfall, because that is when ladders, shutters and roof work become dangerous. A plan that says "close when the hurricane makes landfall" is about a day late. The NHC glossary has the exact definitions, including the separate storm surge watches and warnings.

Surge versus wind. The Saffir-Simpson category describes sustained wind and nothing else. It says nothing about storm surge, the seawater pushed ashore by the storm, or about rainfall. Water, not wind, has historically caused most hurricane deaths. A large, slow Category 1 can push more water into a bay than a compact Category 3.

Coast versus inland. Hurricane Helene in September 2024 brought catastrophic flooding to western North Carolina, hundreds of miles from the coast, in communities that did not think of themselves as hurricane country. If you have sites, suppliers or employees anywhere in the Southeast, the rainfall forecast matters as much as the track.

Know the evacuation zone for each site and for where key staff live. Zones are drawn mainly for surge, and an evacuation order for your office's zone is effectively a closure order for your business.

Before June 1: the work that needs a normal week

Insurance: find the flood gap now

Standard commercial property policies generally exclude flood. Flood cover comes from the National Flood Insurance Program or a private flood policy, and the NFIP's usual 30-day waiting period means the policy has to be in force long before a storm forms. Three gaps catch firms out:

• Limits. NFIP commercial coverage tops out at $500,000 for the building and $500,000 for contents. For many businesses that is not enough, and excess flood cover has to be arranged separately.
• Lost income. The NFIP does not pay for business interruption. Whether your commercial policy's interruption cover responds to a flood depends on its wording, and many policies require a covered physical loss first, which a flood exclusion removes. Read our briefing on business interruption insurance and continuity planning, then sit down with your broker.
• Basements. NFIP coverage below the lowest elevated floor is limited to certain building equipment and excludes most contents. Inventory, records and servers in a basement are, from a flood-insurance standpoint, largely on their own.

Also check named-storm or windstorm deductibles. In coastal states they are often a percentage of insured value rather than a flat amount, and many owners first discover the figure on the claim form.

Basements and generators: what Sandy taught coastal cities

Superstorm Sandy came ashore in New Jersey on 29 October 2012 and pushed a record surge into New York Harbor. Lower Manhattan lost power for days after a Con Edison substation flooded. The New York Stock Exchange closed for two consecutive days for weather, something it had not done since the blizzard of 1888. Two major Manhattan hospitals evacuated patients after flooding knocked out backup power systems or the fuel pumps that fed them.

The building lesson was blunt. Plenty of structures had generators on upper floors or roofs and believed themselves protected, but the switchgear, fuel tanks or fuel pumps sat in the basement. When the basement filled, the generator had nothing to burn or no path to deliver power. New York's post-Sandy resiliency work led to code changes encouraging critical equipment to move up, but most existing buildings, including many small-business leases, still have the old arrangement.

Ask your landlord or facilities team before the season:

• Where are the switchgear, fuel tank, fuel pumps and fire pump? Above or below the expected flood elevation?
• Is the generator sized for tenant loads, or only for life-safety systems such as stair lighting and elevators?
• Is fuel delivery guaranteed during a regional emergency, or "best effort"?
• With no generator, is there a pre-wired connection so a rental unit can be hooked up quickly?

Data and records

Back up to a location outside the storm's likely footprint. A second office 30 miles down the same coast is not a recovery site; it is the same storm. Cloud backup works for most smaller firms, provided someone has tested a restore and can reach the credentials without the office. Scan the paper that matters (leases, insurance policies, licenses, key contracts, the staff contact list) and store originals above flood level in waterproof containers. Photograph or video every room, the equipment and the stock before the season. Adjusters respond much better to dated images than to memory.

Payroll and cash

After a major storm, employees need to be paid on time more than at almost any other moment, and the systems that pay them are under stress.

• Decide now whether you will run payroll early if a pay date falls in the storm window, and confirm your provider's cutoff times.
• If payroll runs on a server in your office, treat that as a single point of failure and move it.
• Write the policy on paying hourly staff during a closure before anyone has to ask. Uncertainty about pay keeps people at work longer than they should stay.
• Keep some cash on hand. Card terminals and ATMs need power and communications, and both can be out across a region for days.
• Arrange or increase a line of credit now. Lenders are more relaxed before a disaster than after one.

People and their own homes

Employees will not focus on your building until their families and homes are secure, and they should not have to. Encourage staff to make their own household plans and learn their evacuation zones. Plan to release people early enough to protect their homes and leave if ordered. Collect a personal mobile number and an out-of-area contact for everyone. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 scattered workforces across several states for months, and firms that held only work numbers and office addresses spent weeks just finding their people.

If you have no written continuity plan yet, start one now; an annotated plan table of contents shows what a complete version covers.

The countdown

After the storm: re-entry and power

Re-entry is controlled by local officials, not by your lease. Expect closed roads, curfews and checkpoints limited to residents and authorized workers. Some coastal counties run business re-entry programs that let enrolled firms send essential staff in earlier; if yours does, enroll before the season. A standing relationship with your county emergency management office, the sort of public–private partnership many coastal communities now encourage, is how you learn which roads are open and when.

Power restoration follows a priority order. Utilities generally restore transmission lines and substations first, then critical facilities such as hospitals and water plants, then the main lines serving the most customers, and last the smaller lines and individual services. A business at the end of a damaged side line can wait well beyond the neighborhood average. If the storm damaged your building's own electrical service equipment, the utility will not reconnect until a licensed electrician has repaired it, and in many places an inspector has signed off. Line up an electrician in advance.

Run portable generators outdoors only, well away from doors and windows; carbon monoxide poisoning is a recurring cause of death after hurricanes. Start drying wet areas quickly, since mold can begin growing within a day or two. Keep paying people if you possibly can, and keep checking on staff who have been displaced. The firms that recovered fastest after Katrina and Sandy, events covered in our history of disasters that shaped continuity planning, were usually the ones that kept their workforce intact.

The one-page checklist

Before June 1

• Flood policy in force; limits, deductibles and interruption terms reviewed with your broker
• Evacuation zones known for every site and key employee
• Switchgear, fuel and pump locations confirmed; generator capacity understood
• Backups held outside the region, and a restore tested
• Pre-season photos and video of premises and inventory
• Early-payroll plan, closure pay policy, cash reserve and credit line
• Personal mobile and out-of-area contact for every employee
• Shutters, sandbags, tarps and fuel arranged
• Electrician, restoration contractor and broker details printed and stored in two places

When a storm threatens

• 72 hours: closure criteria set, backups verified, fuel ordered, customers told
• 48 hours: building secured, stock and records raised, staff in evacuation zones released
• 24 hours: closed, equipment powered down, premises photographed, check-in instructions sent

After

• Everyone accounted for
• Re-entry only with official clearance
• Damage photographed before cleanup; claim opened
• Electrician inspection before power is restored to the building
• Payroll on time, cash available, displaced staff followed up

Ready.gov's business preparedness pages offer templates for most of the pieces above. Use them, but fill them in before June.