The time to check your home and yard for potential hazards — and make sure you have enough insurance just in case — is before disaster strikes.

In case anyone needed a reminder of the value of flood insurance, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there is likely to be more than your usual number of powerful storms this year. After Sandy, Irene, Isaias and Ida, you have to assume one or more of those tropical tempests will track a course north for New England — or a nor’easter otherwise. If rising waters are not a major worry for you based on your home’s location, toppling trees might be.

Any discussion of shoring up your home against the storm must start with the obvious — your own safety is the critical thing. If you have yet to do so, get a reliable plan with a couple of options for where to go if your house is in the bull’s-eye of a storm looming too powerful to risk riding it out. The Connecticut Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security has tips for storm preparation online at portal.ct.gov/demhs. 

The next consideration is for your most valuable investment — the home itself. And there is a major change this year in how the federal government is underwriting insurance for the most expensive threat of rising floodwaters. While homeowners insurance policies in Connecticut cover windstorms — policies can contain additional deductibles for hurricane-strength storms — they do not cover damage from flooding. Under the National Flood Insurance Program’s Risk Rating 2.0 change that took effect fully in April, NFIP will no longer calculate premiums according to a property’s location in a general flood zone as policies come up for renewal. Instead, insurance is being priced according to a home’s elevation and specific proximity to bodies of water; the ability of the foundation to withstand any flood; and the structure’s replacement value, among other variables.

Tim Russell is one of Connecticut’s foremost experts on flood insurance, having served as chairman of the Flood Insurance Producers National Committee, which acts in an advisory capacity to federal agencies. “If you think of it, two inches of water in a house that would cost $300,000 to build is going to cause less damage than two inches of water in a house that costs $1.5 million to build, just because the materials are more expensive,” says Russell, senior member of The Russell Agency in Southport. “It’s a more equitable way of rating flood insurance.”

Russell says that, while 46 percent of Connecticut flood insurance policies in effect will see a small increase under the new risk rating, 37 percent will see a decline. About 14 percent will get hit with larger increases — Risk Rating 2.0 allows for rate hikes of up to 18 percent in any given year on a primary residence, and 25 percent for a vacation home or houses that have been pummeled repeatedly by damaging storms. Tack on fees, and that can result in a $200 hike or more in any one year for a single property.

Do not neglect up top. Experts recommend spring and fall inspections of your roof — and after a major wind storm — to ensure everything is nailed down correctly for the next one. 

Then there are the walls themselves. Even if you have no dead trees menacing your house, you might miss the warning signs of weakened trees that look relatively healthy to the untrained eye, according to Pat Flynn in the Danbury office of Bartlett Tree Experts, who is president of the Connecticut Tree Protective Association.

Even healthy trees have differing wood strengths and soil bases that can make some species more prone to failure during a tropical storm or nor’easter.

While the disruptions of the pandemic have impacted the arborist industry’s labor force, for many companies the waiting time is only a few weeks for an estimate and getting a crew onto the property, Flynn says. Jobs deemed urgent are generally given priority.

“Every time there is a hurricane predicted, people start to get concerned about their trees and arborists get very busy,” Flynn says. “The best thing that homeowners can do is to have an arborist that services the property regularly. That arborist will be monitoring those trees and alerting the property owner if there is anything that is potentially hazardous to the house.”