January 5, 2024 • 21 mins
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Episode Transcript
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(00:07):
This is news Radio seven to tenWNTM. Uncle Henry here on ask the
Expert, and once again we welcomeback to news Radio seven ten WNTM.
Disaster Smart. Darius Grimes is herefrom Disaster Smart. Darius Grimes, Happy
New Year, Happy twenty twenty fourto you, Happy new year to you.
(00:28):
Is going to be a busy yearfor Disaster Smart boy. We hope
it got really busy last year,and we think it's going to continue to
get busier. Well, please tellme and the listener for people that have
never heard you before on WNTM,what is Disaster Smart. Disaster Smart is
a inspection and evaluation company. Weoperate in six states, but probably fifty
(00:50):
percent of our total businesses in Alabamawith the Fortified program. And so we
do the fortified evaluations for Strength andAlabama homes, for habit for Humanity,
for various different nonprofit groups that arehelping to rebuild communities where the people were
under insured or didn't have insurance andlost their homes. And then also for
residents and builders. We have overone hundred and sixty builders that we work
(01:14):
with that are building new homes tothe fortified standards and need the certification for
their buyers or their homeowners. Sobefore someone can have a fortified roof or
a fortified home, they have tohave someone evaluate that is correct. An
evaluator must be involved in the process. You can't just rely on the fact
that some of the jurisdictions have adoptedsome of the standards into their building codes.
(01:36):
You have to have it evaluated.Now, we've talked for years about
fortified roofs and homes, not juston this station, but all around the
Gulf Coast. For people that havenot heard these discussions, briefly, the
advantages to having a fortified roof ora fortified home are. I know,
the one benefit is that you're saferin a storm. Oh correct, Yes,
(01:57):
Actually, when Hurricane Sally, Ithink we had some twenty thousand fortified
homes directly in the path of Sally, and those homes, the people that
lived in those homes were absolutely ecstaticthat they really had If they had any
damage to their roof at all,they had no water inside the house.
And that is probably seventy percent ofall insurance claims in a hurricane is losing
(02:19):
your roof covering and then the waterjust pouring down through the joints and the
cracks and the roof decking and destroyingthe inside of your home. Okay,
so safer in a storm. Plussaving money on homeowners insurance. Oh absolutely.
It not only can save money onyour homeowner's insurance, it can reduce
your deductible and there's other benefits itcan make you. Right now, with
what's going on in the insurance market, your availability of insurance is shrinking.
(02:45):
But if you have a fortified certificateon your home, you're able to purchase
insurance for more companies that if youdid not have one. Okay, so
fortified certificates for my roof or formy home. Are these certificates good forever
or do we have to renew thecertificate? The certificates are good for five
years, but there's a butt.If you reroof your home or do an
(03:07):
addition or some sort of other structuralchange during that five year period, you
must renew your certificate at that time. Otherwise you run the chance of permanently
losing your certification if it's not properlydocumented. Wow, okay, so you
could lose your certification. What arethe what happens when I lose my certification?
(03:29):
Automatically? Lose the insurance discount.Well, up until probably last year,
the answer to that would be no, you'd lose it after it expired,
your certificate expired. But what's happeningnow is the insurance companies are monitoring
expiration dates. So if you reroofedyour home and let's say it was during
a hurricane, and you turn thatclaim into your insurance company and they see
(03:52):
that you reroofed and you have aFortified certificate, they would be looking for
that certificate to be renewed, okay, and see a new certificate with a
later expiration date. Are a lotof people on the Alabama Gulf Coast going
to have their certificates expire this year? Oh yeah, we think it's the
number somewhere between five and six thousand, oh this year. Now, there's
(04:15):
some good news for that, okay. So Fortified has come out and sort
of changed your program a little bit, so you no longer have to wait
until you get close to that renewaldate. You can renew up to a
year before your certificate expires and stillget your five years from the expiration date,
so you don't lose any time byrenewing early. What you do is
you get your certificate faster because you'renot waiting till everybody bottlenecks to the whole
(04:40):
system trying to get their certificates atone time. So we encourage people now
to renew early because they're not goingto lose any time. That's the big
benefit. If your certificate is morethan a year expired, you can still
renew it, but you are goingto pay a reinstatement fee. That's something
new for this year as well.So forty five now wants to charge more
(05:03):
for those submittals when we do themto re reissue the certificate on that Even
in that case, we had alady the other day her certificate expired in
twenty seventeen and the insurance company caughtit and said, hey, we've been
giving you this discount all these years. You're not going to get it.
(05:23):
We're going to drop your coverage becauseyou don't have a vortive I know.
So she called an evaluator, notus, and the evaluator went and had
the certificate renewed. Well, thiswas just like in the last couple of
months. You know what her nextrenewal date is? What this year in
March? Oh no, see,because it goes from five years of the
date that that certificate was originally goingto be renewed. Now she's upset because
(05:46):
now she's got to turn around,she's got to renew it again to get
the next five years. And shethought she was being double charged. But
you know, she got those discountsfor five years because the insurance companies weren't
really looking. Now they are lookingat those expiration dates. Okay, So
people that need the certificate renewed calldisaster Smart. The number is eight eight
(06:09):
eight nine sixty four eighty seven seventysix. That's eight eight eight nine six
four eighty seven seventy six. Thewebsite is gofortified dot com. That's gofortified
dot com. To go find outmore about disaster Smart and get yourself on
the schedule to get evaluated so youcan get renewed. Is it a difficult
process to get reevaluated and get renewedas long as they didn't make any changes.
(06:32):
No, it's fairly simple. Iwould say too that if you think
you had a fortified certificate on yourhome and you can't find it, you
can call us. We can wecan either locate the certificate and get you
a copy. We don't charge forthat, or we can tell you whether
the home ever had a certificate atall. Now this is radio and we
don't have pictures yet on radio.We're still working on it. But we're
(06:56):
also doing this show on Facebook livevideo you can find on the Uncle Henry
Show Facebook page. And you broughtme a copy of a fortified certificate so
people can see what they look like. And you've got a line and a
circle around where the expiration date isso those watching the video can see where
on the certificate to find the expirationdate and what the certificate looks like.
(07:19):
And you said just a few minutesago, if somebody can't find their certificate,
you can help them. Yes,we can. If they had one,
we can tell them whether the numberone, whether they ever had one
or not, and then number twoif they did, we can download a
copy of it and send it tothem. Okay, so this is and
again a lot of people you mentionedin the thousands are going to have their
(07:40):
certificates expired this year on the AlabamaGulf Coast. Those folks need to get
evaluated so they can renew. Andyou just told us a few minutes ago
that even if it's not this year. If you want to get ready for
next year, you can just goahead and get it done in advance.
Yeah, you don't want to renewearly, yeah, because then you could
(08:03):
be well, you wouldn't get penalized. But if you're if you're early,
you wouldn't necessarily have any benefit there. So there's statuses in our system.
When we look up your certificate,if it says on time, then you'll
get to you'll be able to renewthat certificate for five years from the expiration
date of your current certificate. Ifyou're early, yeah, you could lose
(08:24):
some time. So the only peoplethat would want to go early would be
people who had to reroof doing anaddition or something like that, because they
would get a new certificate with anew five year period. Now you've mentioned
in previous shows and also today thatif I'm adding on to my home,
if I'm making a big change tothe house, that can really affect the
(08:45):
certification. What should I do ifI Am going to add on to the
house or do something, What shouldI do? Contact us at Disaster Smart
and we can we can walk youthrough that process. What we basically need
to do is document the addition whileit's being built or added on to.
We do this for a lot ofdifferent people who their builders have them call
(09:05):
us, so call us. We'llget involved in the process, and then
when the addition is completed, we'llapply for a new certificate, so you'll
have a new certificate. And sometimespeople are upgrading too, so they may
go from a fortified roof to afortified Silver certificate. So there are other
things that does also happen in theStrength and Alabama Homes program. Now where
(09:28):
where do what is the roofing permittingfall into this? Getting permits for roof
Is that something I need to beconcerned about? Do I need a roofing
permit as another thing in this process? Yes, you do, and there's
a couple of reasons for that.Outside of the fortified program. What we're
(09:48):
learning is that if you don't geta permit, your insurance company may not
may not want to cover your roof, so they may pro rate your roof,
or they may exclude coverage or giveyou actual cash value on your roof.
So what you want is you wantto have a permit, but you
want to make sure that permit wasclosed out. That means the building department
(10:11):
finaled your house when it was completed. So you need to make sure that
your contractor has your permit finaled atthe end of the process. And that
means an inspector generally would come outlook over the roof and then sign off
on the permit as a final andthere's nothing that they saw, you know,
that they would want fixed or repairedor anything else. At that time,
(10:33):
you can address any questions you have, you know about your new roof,
if you have concerns. So that'sall part of the permit finaling process,
but it's very important because that canif you have a final permit,
that can affect your premium, thatcan affect availability of insurance. This is
something new that we're seeing. Idon't know how many companies are doing this,
but it is something we're beginning tofind out. See I I was
(10:56):
going to ask you how big ofan issue has this been, because probably
all over the civilized world, peoplewill cut corners trying to save money.
They'll have a brother in law ora friend of a brother in law help
them with the roof, and somehowa permit. Something isn't right with the
(11:16):
permit. So this is something peoplereally need to pay attention to well,
and that's fine. You can dothat. You can pull what we call
a builder owner permit and do yourown roof or have your brother come doun
tonp you. But you knew needto pull a permit. It is required
in all the jurisdictions in Baldwin AndmobileCounty, Okay. So that is something
that you should not cut corners on. Never cut corners on the permit.
(11:37):
How do I know my roof isfortified? Well, that certificate you just
held up. If you don't haveone of those, your roof is not
fortified. Fortified homes have a certificate. That is what the fortified home program
is all about. So somebody cansay, oh, yeah, we'll do
it to the fortified standards, we'llbuild it to the fortified standards. That
(11:58):
is not a fortified home. Thatis to you know, in my mind,
that's a bit misleading, because afortified home is a home that was
certified by the Institute for Business andHome Safety as a fortified home. Without
that certificate, you really could runa foul if you're representing that when you're
selling the home, or if somebodyis representing that to you when you're buying
(12:18):
home that it's fortified, and itdoesn't have the certificate, you can get
in a lot of legal trouble.Again, you're listening to Disaster Smart here
on news Radio seven to ten WNTM. Darius Grimes is with Disaster Smart.
The website is gofortified dot com.That's go fortified dot com and you can
call eight eight eight nine six foureighty seven seventy six. That's eight eight
(12:39):
eight nine six four eighty seven seventysix for Disaster Smart. Now, what
if I don't have a fortified roof? Now I hear about them, I
hear they're wonderful. I mean justI mean you you're safer in a storm,
and you get a discount on yourhomeowners insurance. We're all in favor
of fortified roofs. But let's sayI don't have one, and I'm not
(13:00):
ready to replace my current roof.It's just it's got it a few years
ago, it's still got some lifein it. Is there anything I can
do about this? Is there anythingI need to know that that might help
me going forward? Absolutely? Soyou know, if you got reroofed after
Sally, your roof is still fairlynew and you didn't get a fortified certificate,
(13:20):
and we talked to those people everysingle day in our office. Oh
man, my insurance company says,I need a certificate. I got it
reroofed after Sally. Can I getone? Probably not? In some cases
yes, but it's really a challengeand it's expensive on our end because we
have to spend a lot of timetrying to figure out whether or not it
can go fortified. So for asa general rule, the answer to that
(13:43):
question is no. Okay. Soone thing you can do, though,
to help yourself is call your insuranceagent and if you have a admitted policy
in the state of Alabama, youcan get an endorsement for fortified. So
that means we have a hurricane inthe next year or two, which we
probably will, and you have damageto your roof. Your insurance company,
(14:05):
if you buy that endorsement, willactually pay to bring your roof up to
fortified so that you can get acertificate. They will pay for the evaluation
fees, and they will pay forthe additional cost if there are any to
get that roof to fortified. Becausethe insurance company really believes that these roofs
reduce damage dramatically. The other thingis the cost of that endorsement is in
(14:30):
many cases between twenty and one hundreddollars a year. It is not expensive,
but it's kind of like an insurancepolicy, so that if you do
get damage, hail damage, whendamage, hurricane damage, you know,
a little tornado like we get aroundhere sometimes and you get roof damage all
of a sudden, Now you canget a fortified roof. Another option is
to go to the Strength in AlabamaHomes program. But I'll be honest with
(14:52):
you, you know, pulling anew roof off to replace it with one.
You know, we have seen thatdone. But that's probably not the
best to use of the ground program, right it isn't. But if you
don't mind, I'm going to askyou to repeat some information because this really
is I'd never heard this before.You're saying that I can get even before
(15:13):
a storm or anything. I cancontact my insurance company, I ask them
if I qualify for this, andthen I get pre certified. Does no,
it's a it's an endorsement. It'san endorsement fortified endorsement. So what
happens, you come out and youevaluate. So it's the same thing as
you know in the case of damage, right, rather than just replacing your
(15:35):
roof, you know, if youhave shingles, they say, okay,
well, we'll pay you X numberof dollars put a shingle roof back on
it. They said, Oh,we'll pay you x number of dollars to
put a shingle roof on it,and we will pay for any additional cost
for you to get that roof certifiedby IBHS as a fortified roof. Okay,
So that could cost probably the averagecost in the Baldwin Mobile County areas
(15:58):
anywhere between one thousand and two thousanddollars. They will cover that cost as
part of the claim. Now,see, this is something I'd never heard
you mentioned before. So this issomething a lot of people probably don't know
about that would be tremendously in theiradvantage to take care of them. Yeah,
your Department of Insurance mandated this endorsementfor all insurance companies. Okay.
(16:18):
State of Alabama then is very seriousabout fortified homes. Oh yes, but
you have to buy this endorsement.It is not automatic, it is voluntary.
Okay. So this is something thatif I'm interested in, I should
ask my insurance company and also getin touch with Disasters Mark. Well not
at that point, no, becausethere's not anything we can really do.
(16:41):
What it does is is just puttingan additional coverage option on your home so
the event if it was damaged,then you step in. They would actually
pay for Disastersmark to come out anddo the certification or another evaluation company.
But we want people to choose disastersabsolutely, so that by the way,
go fortified dot com again is thewebsite that's go for a dot com and
the number eight eight eight nine sixtyfour eighty seven seventy six eight eight eight
(17:03):
ninety six four eighty seven seventy sixfour disastrous morning. That is all.
You've been involved with this. Wetalked about this on previous shows. You
were involved with this before any ofthis got started. You kind of helped
steer it. You were one ofthe people advising trying to figure out how
to go about having fortified groups.Right. Yeah, we go all the
(17:25):
way back to nineteen ninety eight whenthe first draft of the fortified program was
being looked at by IBHS and severalother mitigation organizations because we were concerned this
was following Hurricane Andrew. We wereconcerned about what we could do about the
stuff that's already built. How dowe improve it, strengthen it. You
(17:45):
know, the climate is always changing. Hurricanes are a factor of life if
we live on the coast. Sois there anything that we can do to
reduce you know, the billions andbillions of dollars to keep adding up.
And you know, for a longtime, the building community, the building
codes didn't really catch up, sowe continue to build stuff that was going
to fail in hurricanes. Now thebuilding codes are pretty good. But what
(18:07):
the fortified does is is it's anotherlayer in there that makes sure certain things,
small things get done correctly. Thingsthat you can't see when you tour
a model home. You would haveno idea because they're during the construction or
during the roofing. But they're thesmall things that make a humongous difference in
how that home is going to performin the next windstorm. So you now
(18:33):
that you are able to look back, you were there at the very beginning,
and here we are twenty twenty four. Are you really pleased at where
we are now? You know?And I would say, in the last
ten years, we've made a dramaticmove, and Alabama is not the only
state now with the fortified program.I think we're up to thirteen or fourteen
states. Florida will probably have itwithin the next year or two. I
(18:57):
am working with some folks, andI have been talking to the Office of
Insurance Regulation for five years about howto get Fortified into Florida. It's complicated,
it's not easy, but all ofa sudden, now insurance companies won't
write coastal homes new construction built tothe Florida's Tough Building Code unless they have
a Fortified Gold certificate on them.Okay, so where you know, two
(19:21):
or three months ago we only hadone or two projects. We've got about
fifty now. Okay, all right, Well, it just it seems like
a no brainer. It just seemslike the thing to do if you want
to have responsible home ownership for yourown wallet. At the very least,
(19:41):
is there anything else that you wantto stress before we're out of town.
We've got a couple of minutes left. Anything else you want to throw out
there? The only thing I wouldsay is, if you're looking at reroofing,
make sure your roofing contractor is afortified wise certified contractor. These are
people that have done the training,understand the program, and probably have done
dozens, made even hundreds of roofs, and that designation, the fortified WISE
(20:03):
designation, gives you better assurance thatnot only do they understand the program,
but they understand why the evaluation isso important, how it has to be
documented, and it solves a lotof problems with standard roofings that we run
into that they think they know whatthe fortified program is, but they miss
taking pictures of something, or theydon't do something right during the process,
(20:26):
and all of a sudden, theyget to the end and they provide pictures
to us and the pictures show thatit does not meet fortified program. And
unfortunately that does happen quite a bit. We don't get that with fortified wise
roofing contractors. They're trained, theyunderstand a program, and they do a
much better job. Well. Ifyou the listener, if you're interested in
(20:47):
a fortified roof, fortified home,all of these things you've heard us talk
about, go to the website gofortified dot com. The company is Disaster
Smart. The website go fortified dotcom. That's go fortified dot com.
And the telephone number is eight eighteight nine six four eighty seven seventy six.
That's eight eight, eight nine sixfour eighty seven seventy six. And
(21:08):
again, Dari Scrimes, you saythat these fortified certificates, how many thousand
are going to expire on the Alabamagolf coast this year? Oh, it'll
be between five and six thousand.We probably still have a thousand left over
from last year that didn't renew.Okay, So a lot of people need
to get busy to get those insurance, those insurance discounts. Absolutely so.
Again, gofortified dot com is thewebsite for disaster smart Go fortified dot com.
(21:33):
Darius Grimes, thank you for yourtime today. Okay, thank you
This is news Radio seven to tenWNTM. Uncle Henry here on ask the
Expert, and once again we welcomeback to news Radio seven ten WNTM.
Disaster Smart. Darius Grimes is herefrom Disaster Smart. Darius Grimes, Happy
New Year, Happy twenty twenty fourto you, Happy new year to you.
(00:28):
Is going to be a busy yearfor Disaster Smart boy. We hope
it got really busy last year,and we think it's going to continue to
get busier. Well, please tellme and the listener for people that have
never heard you before on WNTM,what is Disaster Smart. Disaster Smart is
a inspection and evaluation company. Weoperate in six states, but probably fifty
(00:50):
percent of our total businesses in Alabamawith the Fortified program. And so we
do the fortified evaluations for Strength andAlabama homes, for habit for Humanity,
for various different nonprofit groups that arehelping to rebuild communities where the people were
under insured or didn't have insurance andlost their homes. And then also for
residents and builders. We have overone hundred and sixty builders that we work
(01:14):
with that are building new homes tothe fortified standards and need the certification for
their buyers or their homeowners. Sobefore someone can have a fortified roof or
a fortified home, they have tohave someone evaluate that is correct. An
evaluator must be involved in the process. You can't just rely on the fact
that some of the jurisdictions have adoptedsome of the standards into their building codes.
(01:36):
You have to have it evaluated.Now, we've talked for years about
fortified roofs and homes, not juston this station, but all around the
Gulf Coast. For people that havenot heard these discussions, briefly, the
advantages to having a fortified roof ora fortified home are. I know,
the one benefit is that you're saferin a storm. Oh correct, Yes,
(01:57):
Actually, when Hurricane Sally, Ithink we had some twenty thousand fortified
homes directly in the path of Sally, and those homes, the people that
lived in those homes were absolutely ecstaticthat they really had If they had any
damage to their roof at all,they had no water inside the house.
And that is probably seventy percent ofall insurance claims in a hurricane is losing
(02:19):
your roof covering and then the waterjust pouring down through the joints and the
cracks and the roof decking and destroyingthe inside of your home. Okay,
so safer in a storm. Plussaving money on homeowners insurance. Oh absolutely.
It not only can save money onyour homeowner's insurance, it can reduce
your deductible and there's other benefits itcan make you. Right now, with
what's going on in the insurance market, your availability of insurance is shrinking.
(02:45):
But if you have a fortified certificateon your home, you're able to purchase
insurance for more companies that if youdid not have one. Okay, so
fortified certificates for my roof or formy home. Are these certificates good forever
or do we have to renew thecertificate? The certificates are good for five
years, but there's a butt.If you reroof your home or do an
(03:07):
addition or some sort of other structuralchange during that five year period, you
must renew your certificate at that time. Otherwise you run the chance of permanently
losing your certification if it's not properlydocumented. Wow, okay, so you
could lose your certification. What arethe what happens when I lose my certification?
(03:29):
Automatically? Lose the insurance discount.Well, up until probably last year,
the answer to that would be no, you'd lose it after it expired,
your certificate expired. But what's happeningnow is the insurance companies are monitoring
expiration dates. So if you reroofedyour home and let's say it was during
a hurricane, and you turn thatclaim into your insurance company and they see
(03:52):
that you reroofed and you have aFortified certificate, they would be looking for
that certificate to be renewed, okay, and see a new certificate with a
later expiration date. Are a lotof people on the Alabama Gulf Coast going
to have their certificates expire this year? Oh yeah, we think it's the
number somewhere between five and six thousand, oh this year. Now, there's
(04:15):
some good news for that, okay. So Fortified has come out and sort
of changed your program a little bit, so you no longer have to wait
until you get close to that renewaldate. You can renew up to a
year before your certificate expires and stillget your five years from the expiration date,
so you don't lose any time byrenewing early. What you do is
you get your certificate faster because you'renot waiting till everybody bottlenecks to the whole
(04:40):
system trying to get their certificates atone time. So we encourage people now
to renew early because they're not goingto lose any time. That's the big
benefit. If your certificate is morethan a year expired, you can still
renew it, but you are goingto pay a reinstatement fee. That's something
new for this year as well.So forty five now wants to charge more
(05:03):
for those submittals when we do themto re reissue the certificate on that Even
in that case, we had alady the other day her certificate expired in
twenty seventeen and the insurance company caughtit and said, hey, we've been
giving you this discount all these years. You're not going to get it.
(05:23):
We're going to drop your coverage becauseyou don't have a vortive I know.
So she called an evaluator, notus, and the evaluator went and had
the certificate renewed. Well, thiswas just like in the last couple of
months. You know what her nextrenewal date is? What this year in
March? Oh no, see,because it goes from five years of the
date that that certificate was originally goingto be renewed. Now she's upset because
(05:46):
now she's got to turn around,she's got to renew it again to get
the next five years. And shethought she was being double charged. But
you know, she got those discountsfor five years because the insurance companies weren't
really looking. Now they are lookingat those expiration dates. Okay, So
people that need the certificate renewed calldisaster Smart. The number is eight eight
(06:09):
eight nine sixty four eighty seven seventysix. That's eight eight eight nine six
four eighty seven seventy six. Thewebsite is gofortified dot com. That's gofortified
dot com. To go find outmore about disaster Smart and get yourself on
the schedule to get evaluated so youcan get renewed. Is it a difficult
process to get reevaluated and get renewedas long as they didn't make any changes.
(06:32):
No, it's fairly simple. Iwould say too that if you think
you had a fortified certificate on yourhome and you can't find it, you
can call us. We can wecan either locate the certificate and get you
a copy. We don't charge forthat, or we can tell you whether
the home ever had a certificate atall. Now this is radio and we
don't have pictures yet on radio.We're still working on it. But we're
(06:56):
also doing this show on Facebook livevideo you can find on the Uncle Henry
Show Facebook page. And you broughtme a copy of a fortified certificate so
people can see what they look like. And you've got a line and a
circle around where the expiration date isso those watching the video can see where
on the certificate to find the expirationdate and what the certificate looks like.
(07:19):
And you said just a few minutesago, if somebody can't find their certificate,
you can help them. Yes,we can. If they had one,
we can tell them whether the numberone, whether they ever had one
or not, and then number twoif they did, we can download a
copy of it and send it tothem. Okay, so this is and
again a lot of people you mentionedin the thousands are going to have their
(07:40):
certificates expired this year on the AlabamaGulf Coast. Those folks need to get
evaluated so they can renew. Andyou just told us a few minutes ago
that even if it's not this year. If you want to get ready for
next year, you can just goahead and get it done in advance.
Yeah, you don't want to renewearly, yeah, because then you could
(08:03):
be well, you wouldn't get penalized. But if you're if you're early,
you wouldn't necessarily have any benefit there. So there's statuses in our system.
When we look up your certificate,if it says on time, then you'll
get to you'll be able to renewthat certificate for five years from the expiration
date of your current certificate. Ifyou're early, yeah, you could lose
(08:24):
some time. So the only peoplethat would want to go early would be
people who had to reroof doing anaddition or something like that, because they
would get a new certificate with anew five year period. Now you've mentioned
in previous shows and also today thatif I'm adding on to my home,
if I'm making a big change tothe house, that can really affect the
(08:45):
certification. What should I do ifI Am going to add on to the
house or do something, What shouldI do? Contact us at Disaster Smart
and we can we can walk youthrough that process. What we basically need
to do is document the addition whileit's being built or added on to.
We do this for a lot ofdifferent people who their builders have them call
(09:05):
us, so call us. We'llget involved in the process, and then
when the addition is completed, we'llapply for a new certificate, so you'll
have a new certificate. And sometimespeople are upgrading too, so they may
go from a fortified roof to afortified Silver certificate. So there are other
things that does also happen in theStrength and Alabama Homes program. Now where
(09:28):
where do what is the roofing permittingfall into this? Getting permits for roof
Is that something I need to beconcerned about? Do I need a roofing
permit as another thing in this process? Yes, you do, and there's
a couple of reasons for that.Outside of the fortified program. What we're
(09:48):
learning is that if you don't geta permit, your insurance company may not
may not want to cover your roof, so they may pro rate your roof,
or they may exclude coverage or giveyou actual cash value on your roof.
So what you want is you wantto have a permit, but you
want to make sure that permit wasclosed out. That means the building department
(10:11):
finaled your house when it was completed. So you need to make sure that
your contractor has your permit finaled atthe end of the process. And that
means an inspector generally would come outlook over the roof and then sign off
on the permit as a final andthere's nothing that they saw, you know,
that they would want fixed or repairedor anything else. At that time,
(10:33):
you can address any questions you have, you know about your new roof,
if you have concerns. So that'sall part of the permit finaling process,
but it's very important because that canif you have a final permit,
that can affect your premium, thatcan affect availability of insurance. This is
something new that we're seeing. Idon't know how many companies are doing this,
but it is something we're beginning tofind out. See I I was
(10:56):
going to ask you how big ofan issue has this been, because probably
all over the civilized world, peoplewill cut corners trying to save money.
They'll have a brother in law ora friend of a brother in law help
them with the roof, and somehowa permit. Something isn't right with the
(11:16):
permit. So this is something peoplereally need to pay attention to well,
and that's fine. You can dothat. You can pull what we call
a builder owner permit and do yourown roof or have your brother come doun
tonp you. But you knew needto pull a permit. It is required
in all the jurisdictions in Baldwin AndmobileCounty, Okay. So that is something
that you should not cut corners on. Never cut corners on the permit.
(11:37):
How do I know my roof isfortified? Well, that certificate you just
held up. If you don't haveone of those, your roof is not
fortified. Fortified homes have a certificate. That is what the fortified home program
is all about. So somebody cansay, oh, yeah, we'll do
it to the fortified standards, we'llbuild it to the fortified standards. That
(11:58):
is not a fortified home. Thatis to you know, in my mind,
that's a bit misleading, because afortified home is a home that was
certified by the Institute for Business andHome Safety as a fortified home. Without
that certificate, you really could runa foul if you're representing that when you're
selling the home, or if somebodyis representing that to you when you're buying
(12:18):
home that it's fortified, and itdoesn't have the certificate, you can get
in a lot of legal trouble.Again, you're listening to Disaster Smart here
on news Radio seven to ten WNTM. Darius Grimes is with Disaster Smart.
The website is gofortified dot com.That's go fortified dot com and you can
call eight eight eight nine six foureighty seven seventy six. That's eight eight
(12:39):
eight nine six four eighty seven seventysix for Disaster Smart. Now, what
if I don't have a fortified roof? Now I hear about them, I
hear they're wonderful. I mean justI mean you you're safer in a storm,
and you get a discount on yourhomeowners insurance. We're all in favor
of fortified roofs. But let's sayI don't have one, and I'm not
(13:00):
ready to replace my current roof.It's just it's got it a few years
ago, it's still got some lifein it. Is there anything I can
do about this? Is there anythingI need to know that that might help
me going forward? Absolutely? Soyou know, if you got reroofed after
Sally, your roof is still fairlynew and you didn't get a fortified certificate,
(13:20):
and we talked to those people everysingle day in our office. Oh
man, my insurance company says,I need a certificate. I got it
reroofed after Sally. Can I getone? Probably not? In some cases
yes, but it's really a challengeand it's expensive on our end because we
have to spend a lot of timetrying to figure out whether or not it
can go fortified. So for asa general rule, the answer to that
(13:43):
question is no. Okay. Soone thing you can do, though,
to help yourself is call your insuranceagent and if you have a admitted policy
in the state of Alabama, youcan get an endorsement for fortified. So
that means we have a hurricane inthe next year or two, which we
probably will, and you have damageto your roof. Your insurance company,
(14:05):
if you buy that endorsement, willactually pay to bring your roof up to
fortified so that you can get acertificate. They will pay for the evaluation
fees, and they will pay forthe additional cost if there are any to
get that roof to fortified. Becausethe insurance company really believes that these roofs
reduce damage dramatically. The other thingis the cost of that endorsement is in
(14:30):
many cases between twenty and one hundreddollars a year. It is not expensive,
but it's kind of like an insurancepolicy, so that if you do
get damage, hail damage, whendamage, hurricane damage, you know,
a little tornado like we get aroundhere sometimes and you get roof damage all
of a sudden, Now you canget a fortified roof. Another option is
to go to the Strength in AlabamaHomes program. But I'll be honest with
(14:52):
you, you know, pulling anew roof off to replace it with one.
You know, we have seen thatdone. But that's probably not the
best to use of the ground program, right it isn't. But if you
don't mind, I'm going to askyou to repeat some information because this really
is I'd never heard this before.You're saying that I can get even before
(15:13):
a storm or anything. I cancontact my insurance company, I ask them
if I qualify for this, andthen I get pre certified. Does no,
it's a it's an endorsement. It'san endorsement fortified endorsement. So what
happens, you come out and youevaluate. So it's the same thing as
you know in the case of damage, right, rather than just replacing your
(15:35):
roof, you know, if youhave shingles, they say, okay,
well, we'll pay you X numberof dollars put a shingle roof back on
it. They said, Oh,we'll pay you x number of dollars to
put a shingle roof on it,and we will pay for any additional cost
for you to get that roof certifiedby IBHS as a fortified roof. Okay,
So that could cost probably the averagecost in the Baldwin Mobile County areas
(15:58):
anywhere between one thousand and two thousanddollars. They will cover that cost as
part of the claim. Now,see, this is something I'd never heard
you mentioned before. So this issomething a lot of people probably don't know
about that would be tremendously in theiradvantage to take care of them. Yeah,
your Department of Insurance mandated this endorsementfor all insurance companies. Okay.
(16:18):
State of Alabama then is very seriousabout fortified homes. Oh yes, but
you have to buy this endorsement.It is not automatic, it is voluntary.
Okay. So this is something thatif I'm interested in, I should
ask my insurance company and also getin touch with Disasters Mark. Well not
at that point, no, becausethere's not anything we can really do.
(16:41):
What it does is is just puttingan additional coverage option on your home so
the event if it was damaged,then you step in. They would actually
pay for Disastersmark to come out anddo the certification or another evaluation company.
But we want people to choose disastersabsolutely, so that by the way,
go fortified dot com again is thewebsite that's go for a dot com and
the number eight eight eight nine sixtyfour eighty seven seventy six eight eight eight
(17:03):
ninety six four eighty seven seventy sixfour disastrous morning. That is all.
You've been involved with this. Wetalked about this on previous shows. You
were involved with this before any ofthis got started. You kind of helped
steer it. You were one ofthe people advising trying to figure out how
to go about having fortified groups.Right. Yeah, we go all the
(17:25):
way back to nineteen ninety eight whenthe first draft of the fortified program was
being looked at by IBHS and severalother mitigation organizations because we were concerned this
was following Hurricane Andrew. We wereconcerned about what we could do about the
stuff that's already built. How dowe improve it, strengthen it. You
(17:45):
know, the climate is always changing. Hurricanes are a factor of life if
we live on the coast. Sois there anything that we can do to
reduce you know, the billions andbillions of dollars to keep adding up.
And you know, for a longtime, the building community, the building
codes didn't really catch up, sowe continue to build stuff that was going
to fail in hurricanes. Now thebuilding codes are pretty good. But what
(18:07):
the fortified does is is it's anotherlayer in there that makes sure certain things,
small things get done correctly. Thingsthat you can't see when you tour
a model home. You would haveno idea because they're during the construction or
during the roofing. But they're thesmall things that make a humongous difference in
how that home is going to performin the next windstorm. So you now
(18:33):
that you are able to look back, you were there at the very beginning,
and here we are twenty twenty four. Are you really pleased at where
we are now? You know?And I would say, in the last
ten years, we've made a dramaticmove, and Alabama is not the only
state now with the fortified program.I think we're up to thirteen or fourteen
states. Florida will probably have itwithin the next year or two. I
(18:57):
am working with some folks, andI have been talking to the Office of
Insurance Regulation for five years about howto get Fortified into Florida. It's complicated,
it's not easy, but all ofa sudden, now insurance companies won't
write coastal homes new construction built tothe Florida's Tough Building Code unless they have
a Fortified Gold certificate on them.Okay, so where you know, two
(19:21):
or three months ago we only hadone or two projects. We've got about
fifty now. Okay, all right, Well, it just it seems like
a no brainer. It just seemslike the thing to do if you want
to have responsible home ownership for yourown wallet. At the very least,
(19:41):
is there anything else that you wantto stress before we're out of town.
We've got a couple of minutes left. Anything else you want to throw out
there? The only thing I wouldsay is, if you're looking at reroofing,
make sure your roofing contractor is afortified wise certified contractor. These are
people that have done the training,understand the program, and probably have done
dozens, made even hundreds of roofs, and that designation, the fortified WISE
(20:03):
designation, gives you better assurance thatnot only do they understand the program,
but they understand why the evaluation isso important, how it has to be
documented, and it solves a lotof problems with standard roofings that we run
into that they think they know whatthe fortified program is, but they miss
taking pictures of something, or theydon't do something right during the process,
(20:26):
and all of a sudden, theyget to the end and they provide pictures
to us and the pictures show thatit does not meet fortified program. And
unfortunately that does happen quite a bit. We don't get that with fortified wise
roofing contractors. They're trained, theyunderstand a program, and they do a
much better job. Well. Ifyou the listener, if you're interested in
(20:47):
a fortified roof, fortified home,all of these things you've heard us talk
about, go to the website gofortified dot com. The company is Disaster
Smart. The website go fortified dotcom. That's go fortified dot com.
And the telephone number is eight eighteight nine six four eighty seven seventy six.
That's eight eight, eight nine sixfour eighty seven seventy six. And
(21:08):
again, Dari Scrimes, you saythat these fortified certificates, how many thousand
are going to expire on the Alabamagolf coast this year? Oh, it'll
be between five and six thousand.We probably still have a thousand left over
from last year that didn't renew.Okay, So a lot of people need
to get busy to get those insurance, those insurance discounts. Absolutely so.
Again, gofortified dot com is thewebsite for disaster smart Go fortified dot com.
(21:33):
Darius Grimes, thank you for yourtime today. Okay, thank you
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