Storm season

Hurricane and Flood Debris: What to Do First

This region has been through Rita, Ike, Harvey, Imelda, Laura and Delta inside twenty years. Most people here have done this before. Here is the practical sequence.

First: safety, then documentation

Safety. Treat every downed line as live. Do not touch limbs resting on power lines. Watch for damaged structures, nails in debris, snakes and fire ants displaced by water, and standing water that may be contaminated — in this region that can include refinery and industrial runoff, so treat flood water as dirty water without exception. Working outside all day without power in a Gulf Coast summer is a genuine heat risk. Generators go outside, well away from windows, always.

Documentation. Photograph everything before you move it. Every damaged structure, every water line on the wall, every ruined item. Multiple angles, something for scale. Adjusters are overwhelmed after a major event and may not reach you for weeks; your photographs are the record.

Do not dispose of damaged property before your adjuster has seen it or given permission, unless it is a health hazard. Wet carpet, drywall and insulation are the exception — those have to come out fast.

Wet debris is heavier than you think

The single most common sizing mistake on storm work, and after Harvey it is the conversation we had most often.

A whole-house muck-out that would be a comfortable 30 yard if the material were dry is often a 20 yard when it is wet — and even then we will tell you to watch the fill line. Say it is flood-related when you book and we size for weight, not volume.

The muck-out sequence

The standard order once water has been in a house, and it needs to start fast because mould takes hold within a day or two in this climate:

1. Photograph everything before anything moves.
2. Cut the drywall above the water line — typically a foot or two above the highest mark, and to the nearest stud.
3. Pull the insulation out of the exposed cavities.
4. Lift the flooring — carpet, pad, laminate and engineered wood all have to go. Tile sometimes survives; the substrate underneath often does not.
5. Remove lower cabinetry and anything else that wicked water.
6. Get air moving and keep it moving.

Wear a respirator, not a dust mask, and gloves.

What the city can and cannot do after an event

Following a major storm, cities and counties typically announce separate debris collection arrangements, and those change from event to event. Check what is actually running for your area rather than assuming.

What does not change is the underlying position in normal operation. City heavy trash runs weekly for single-family residential customers, but building debris — lumber, drywall, insulation, siding, brick, plaster — is excluded, and a muck-out produces exactly that. The municipal landfill is residential use only, and a contractor's load is chargeable regardless.

So for a homeowner doing their own strip-out with a trailer, there is a free route. For anything at volume, or anything a contractor generated, there is not.

Separating debris the right way

Storm work usually produces genuinely different streams: vegetation from the yard, building material from the house, and appliances and furniture from inside.

Keeping vegetation separate matters more here than in most places, because yard waste is prohibited from being buried at the landfill and has to go to the compost area. Mixed into a muck-out load, that route is lost for the whole container.

Keep the soil out of a vegetation load too. Stumps and root balls bring a great deal of dirt with them — and under the city definition they are not yard waste at all.

When you need your own container

• You are doing a muck-out or repair rather than setting bulky items at the curb
• The volume is more than you can move in a few trailer loads
• You hired a contractor — their load is chargeable and the city landfill is closed to them
• You are a business, a landlord or a property manager
• The property is outside the city limits and on no city route at all
• You need it gone on your schedule rather than the collection schedule

Why capacity disappears

Every hauler has a finite number of containers and trucks. After a major event, demand across the whole region multiplies overnight while the disposal sites deal with volume of their own.

Anyone here who lived through Harvey knows how long that lasted. In the weeks after a significant storm, lead times stretch for everybody, and any hauler promising same-day delivery in that window is probably not being straight with you.

What we do is be honest about it. If we can get you a container on Thursday we will say Thursday. And we prioritise households with genuine habitability problems — water in the house, a roof open to the sky — over routine work. That occasionally makes someone unhappy, and we still think it is the right call.

Preparing before the season

• Trim trees before June, particularly anything overhanging the roof. Doing it out of season also means the vegetation goes out through normal channels rather than in the scramble.
• Clear the yard of loose items that become projectiles.
• Photograph your property, inside and out, before the season. Invaluable for a claim.
• Check your policy, specifically whether you carry flood cover — which is separate from homeowners insurance — and what debris removal allowance you have. Many policies include one that people never claim.
• Know your flood risk honestly. A great many properties in this region that flooded in 2017 had never flooded before.

If you are clearing preventatively, that is exactly the kind of job we would rather do in a quiet month than in the week after a storm.