Storm Season

Plan the Debris Before the Season, Not After the Storm

The useful work happens in May. Afterwards, everyone is calling the same people at the same time — including us.

What we can and cannot promise

Start with honesty, because plenty of companies are not honest about this.

What we can tell you is what genuinely helps: the preparation you do before a season starts is worth more than any promise made after it. That is what the rest of this is about.

For warnings, evacuation and official recovery information, follow the county's emergency management channels and local authorities. Not a waste company's website — including ours.

Before the season: the yard

The single most useful thing you can do, and the best time is well before anything is forecast.

• Get the tree work done early. Overhanging limbs, dead wood and anything leaning toward the house. Arborists are booked solid the moment a storm is named.
• Clear what is already down. Loose brush becomes projectiles.
• Deal with the yard trash properly rather than letting it accumulate — one pile a week, and the rules are specific.
• Clear the sheds and the carport. Loose material stored outside is the stuff that ends up in a neighbour's window.
• Check the drainage. Blocked ditches and drains cause far more everyday damage here than wind does.
• Deal with the derelict. The rotten fence panel, the dead tree, the sagging shed — it is cheaper to remove them in May than to clear them from the yard in September.

This is genuinely container work, and it is the calmest, cheapest time of year to do it. A 20 yard in spring for a proper yard clear-out is a far better purchase than the same container in an emergency.

Before the season: the paperwork

Ten minutes now, and it matters enormously later:

• Photograph the property, inside and out. Every room, the roof, the fences, the outbuildings. Date-stamped. This is your before picture and adjusters ask for it.
• Photograph the contents, especially anything of value.
• Check what your policy actually covers, including debris removal, which is a separate line in many policies and one people are surprised by.
• Know your deductible.
• Store documents somewhere they survive — cloud storage, or with family elsewhere.
• Write down your insurer's claim number somewhere that does not need power.

What changes after a storm

Being straight about the practical picture:

• Municipal and county debris operations take priority and are organized separately from anything a private hauler does. Public rights of way come first.
• Normal collection schedules are suspended or altered. The City's usual rules, allowances and pile limits may not run as published.
• Container availability is genuinely constrained. Not a sales tactic; there is a fixed number of steel boxes in the county.
• Disposal sites get congested, and that lengthens every turnaround.
• Roads and access change. A driveway we could serve last month may not be reachable.

The practical upshot: if you have a container on site when a storm is coming, tell us and we will discuss whether it should be emptied or removed beforehand. An open container in high wind is a hazard.

⚠️ Do not throw it away before the adjuster sees it

The most expensive mistake people make in the first forty-eight hours.

The instinct after damage is to clear up immediately. It is a good instinct and it is the wrong one for anything you intend to claim on.

• Photograph everything before it moves. Wide shots and close shots.
• Do not dispose of damaged material until the claim is settled, unless your adjuster has confirmed in writing that you can.
• Keep damaged items where they can be inspected if it is safe to do so — a garage, a carport, a tarped pile.
• Emergency work to prevent further damage is different. Tarping a roof, boarding a window, stopping water — do it, and keep the receipts.
• Keep every receipt for emergency work, accommodation and materials.

Once it is in a container and gone, it cannot be assessed. We have had customers lose real money this way, and it is entirely avoidable.

Separating debris properly

When you do clear, separating the streams saves money and speeds everything up:

• Vegetative debris — limbs, brush, trunks. Its own route, and much cheaper clean.
• Construction and demolition — roofing, siding, fencing, drywall, flooring.
• Household contents — furniture, carpet, appliances.
• White goods — anything with a compressor needs its refrigerant handled and its fluids removed before disposal.
• Household hazardous waste — fuel, chemicals, batteries, propane. The county HHW centre, never a container.
• Electronics.

The single most common contamination after a storm is treated timber — fence posts and deck boards — going into what was meant to be a clean vegetative load. Nearly all exterior wood here is treated. Keep it out.

Screen rooms, fences and the things people forget

Storm damage in this part of Florida has a particular shape, and these three items account for a great deal of it:

Screen enclosures. Frames and mesh are bulky and almost weightless, so they fill a container by volume long before weight — a screen room alone can take most of a 20 yard. They are construction material, not yard trash.

Fencing. Panels, posts and concrete footings. The footings are heavy and the panels are bulky, which is an awkward combination. Treated timber throughout.

Roofing. Even partial damage produces serious weight — sizing detail here — and a partial tear-off with decking runs heavier than people expect.

Also routinely forgotten: soffit and fascia, gutters, carport panels, shed contents, outdoor furniture, pool equipment, and everything that was stored in the shed that is now spread across the yard.

After the water goes down

Flooding brings its own rules, and they are different from wind damage:

• Anything porous that got wet is likely a loss — carpet, underlay, upholstered furniture, mattresses, drywall.
• Drywall is normally cut well above the water line. Wicking goes higher than the mark.
• Insulation holds water and comes out with it.
• Move fast on drying. In this humidity, mould establishes quickly and the window is measured in days, not weeks.
• Wet material is dramatically heavier. Waterlogged carpet and drywall can double the weight of a load, and it is the most common cause of an unexpected overage after a flood.
• Wear proper protection. Flood water is not clean water.
• Photograph the water line before you cut anything.

Because wet debris is so much heavier, we size flood work smaller than the volume suggests and plan on swaps. It is better to swap a 20 yard twice than to load a 30 that cannot legally be hauled.