Post-Hurricane Board Checklist: The First Days, in the Order They Have to Happen

Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA
Founder & Managing Shareholder

• Checklist
• Published September 26, 2026
• Reviewed by Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA, September 26, 2026
• Florida Statutes as of July 1, 2026
• Applies to: Condominiums · HOAs · Cooperatives

In the first days after a storm the board will be asked to decide things faster than it can think about them. Almost all of the damage a board does to itself in that window comes from three places: letting people back in before anyone qualified said it was safe, signing something to make a contractor go away, and moving the debris before it was photographed. This checklist keeps those three from happening.

Work it in order. The board's emergency powers exist, but they are narrower than most boards assume and they expire. Where an item applies to one chapter only, it says so. For the underlying law see our guide to post-hurricane board duties.

One rule governs everything below: write down what you decided, when, on whose advice, and who voted for it. A board acting under emergency powers is still a board acting, and the record of the decision is what defends it a year later.

The first hours: safety and access

• Confirm no one enters any damaged building until someone qualified has looked at it. That includes directors.
• Determine, on the advice of emergency management or public health officials, which portions of the property are unavailable for entry or occupancy, and post it.§ 718.1265(1)(g); § 719.128(1)(g); § 720.316(1)(g)
• Restrict access to damaged areas physically, not only by notice: tape, barricades, a posted guard where the hazard justifies it.
• Identify downed lines, gas odors, standing water near energized equipment and compromised balconies or stairs, and report them to the utility and the local authority rather than handling them.
• Note for an HOA board that Chapter 720 gives no power to require evacuation. Where evacuation is needed, that is the county's order, not the association's.Condominium and cooperative boards may require evacuation of the property in the event of an evacuation order in the locale, and the statute gives immunity for owners who refuse to leave. An HOA board has no such power.§ 718.1265(1)(h); § 719.128(1)(i); § 720.316(1) contains no evacuation power

Habitability, and who is allowed to decide it

• Retain a licensed engineer or architect to determine whether the buildings can be safely inhabited, accessed or occupied. Do not let the board decide this on a walkthrough.The board's power is to determine habitability based upon the advice of licensed professionals or emergency management or public health officials, not on its own judgment. § 718.1265(1)(i); § 719.128(1)(h)
• For an HOA, note that the statutory habitability determination reaches the common areas, and that a parcel owner's home is not the association's to condemn.§ 720.316(1)(h)
• Put the professional's determination in writing before announcing anything, and attach it to the minutes.
• Resist pressure to reopen on a partial basis without the professional's sign-off on the specific area being reopened."The east tower is fine" is a sentence that has to come from the engineer's letter, not from a director standing in the parking lot.
• Confirm that during a declared state of emergency the association may not prohibit an owner or their authorized contractor from accessing the property to inspect for habitability or to prepare for sale or lease, subject to governmental and health directives.§ 718.1265(3); § 719.128(3); § 720.316(3)

Emergency powers: invoking them and papering them

• Confirm a state of emergency has actually been declared under § 252.36 covering the area the association is in, and put the declaration number in the minutes.The powers are keyed to a declared state of emergency in the area encompassed by the association. Without that, the board is operating on ordinary authority.§ 718.1265(1); § 719.128(1); § 720.316(1)
• Hold a board meeting, even a short one by telephone, and record which powers the board is invoking and for what purpose.Meetings by telephone or real-time electronic means with notice in any practicable manner. § 718.1265(1)(a); § 719.128(1)(a); § 720.316(1)(a)
• Name the powers by letter rather than saying "emergency powers" generally.A resolution that says the board acts under § 718.1265(1)(j) and (1)(k) is far harder to attack than one that says the board is exercising its emergency powers.
• Where the board levies a special assessment without an owner vote, state in the resolution the emergency purpose and the amount, and calendar the owner notice.§ 718.1265(1)(l); § 719.128(1)(l); § 720.316(1)(j)
• For a condominium or cooperative, ratify any emergency-added agenda item at the next regular board meeting.Chapter 720 has no ratification mechanism in the emergency-powers section or in the meeting provisions. HOA boards should still re-approve emergency actions at the next regular meeting as a matter of practice.§ 718.112(2)(c)1.; § 719.106(1)(c)
• Diary a date to stop using emergency powers and return to ordinary procedure, and review it at every meeting.§ 718.1265(2); § 719.128(2); § 720.316(2)

Mitigation and the duty to prevent further damage

• Dry in every breached roof, window and opening as fast as a licensed contractor can reach it, and photograph the condition before the tarp goes on.
• Start water extraction and drying immediately, and record the start time.The policy imposes a duty to protect the property from further damage. Delay between the storm and the extraction is the gap a carrier uses to reduce a claim.
• Authorize removal of wet drywall, insulation, carpet, cabinetry and fixtures where it is necessary to prevent mold, and photograph each area before and after.Mitigating further damage, injury or contagion, including contracting for debris removal and preventing or mitigating the spread of fungus or contagion, is an express emergency power. § 718.1265(1)(j); § 719.128(1)(j); § 720.316(1)(i)
• Log every mitigation invoice separately from repair invoices.Mitigation is usually paid differently from reconstruction. Mixing them in one invoice makes both harder to recover.
• For a condominium or cooperative board, note the power to contract on behalf of an individual owner for items the owner is otherwise responsible for, where necessary to prevent further injury or damage, and that the owner is liable for reimbursement enforceable as an assessment.Use it sparingly and document necessity for each unit. An HOA board has no equivalent power under § 720.316.§ 718.1265(1)(k); § 719.128(1)(k)
• Give written notice to any owner whose unit is entered, stating what was done and why, on the same day if possible.

The damage survey, before anything is moved

• Photograph everything before any cleanup begins, working building by building, elevation by elevation, in a fixed order.
• Photograph each damaged common element from three distances: the whole building, the affected area, and close enough to read the damage.
• Video-walk the property with narration naming the building and the area, and preserve the original files with metadata intact.
• Compare against the pre-storm survey and note where the same view exists in both.Matched before-and-after pairs of the same view are the strongest evidence an association can produce. See insurance claim documentation.
• Preserve failed components that show how the failure happened, and store them somewhere dry and labeled.Fasteners, connectors and sections of failed roof covering can decide a construction defect or product claim later. Once they are in the debris pile they are gone.
• Issue a litigation hold on records, photographs, text messages and e-mails relating to the storm, the property condition and the vendors.The hold reaches directors' personal phones where association business was conducted. See litigation hold and record preservation.

Debris, utilities and security

• Confirm debris is photographed and logged before it is moved or hauled.
• Consider an agreement with the county or municipality for debris removal assistance, which the statute expressly authorizes.§ 718.1265(1)(e); § 719.128(1)(e); § 720.316(1)(e)
• Restore power, water and sewer in a sequence the engineer approves, and do not re-energize wet equipment.
• Put security on the property while it is open, damaged and unoccupied, and keep the invoices with the claim file.
• Control contractor access with a sign-in log at a single point of entry.In the week after a storm, uninvited crews will be on the property. A sign-in log is also your record of who was where when something goes missing.

Emergency contracting, and its limits

• Refuse any document that assigns insurance benefits or directs the carrier to pay the contractor.Assignment of post-loss benefits is prohibited for residential and commercial property policies issued on or after January 1, 2023, and the attempt is void. § 627.7152(13)
• Verify the licence of anyone who touches the property, before the work, and record the number.§ 489.128
• Get a written scope and a price or a rate schedule, even for emergency mitigation, and even if it is two paragraphs.
• Confirm the competitive bidding threshold and whether the emergency justifies proceeding without bids, and record the reasoning.Emergency powers let a board act quickly. They do not repeal the bidding provisions, and a board that skipped bids should say in the minutes why the emergency required it.§ 718.3026(1); § 720.3055(1)
• Keep mitigation contracts short-term and separate from the reconstruction contract.The firm that dried the building out should not end up holding the reconstruction by default. See our emergency contractor review checklist.
• Route any contract above the board's pre-season resolution ceiling to a board vote, however brief.

Owners, and what to hold until counsel and the adjuster are in

• Send the first owner communication within twenty-four hours, even if it says only what is known and when the next message comes.
• Say what the association is responsible for and what the owner is responsible for, and say it early.§ 718.111(11)(f) for condominiums; the declaration and proprietary lease for HOAs and cooperatives
• Tell owners not to sign contractor paperwork for common element work, and why.
• Hold the decision on a special assessment amount until the deductible, the coverage position and a real scope of work are known.An assessment announced on a guess and revised twice is how a board loses the room. See post-storm special assessments.
• Hold any release, settlement or proof of loss until counsel has reviewed it.
• Refer to counsel anything involving a fatality, a serious injury, an owner's claim against the association, or a suggestion that the failure was a construction defect.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes works with Southwest Florida boards in the first days after a storm on habitability, emergency authority, mitigation contracts and the record that has to support all three. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Disaster Recovery page.