New Jersey Storm Damage Checklist

A roof can be replaced. Skip anything on this list that puts you within reach of a live wire or a floor that might not hold your weight.

• Treat every downed or sagging line as energized, including cable and phone lines that may be touching a live conductor — stay at least 30 feet back and call your utility (PSE&G, JCP&L, or Orange & Rockland) and 911.
• Stay out of any room where the ceiling is bulging or dripping — trapped water can weigh enough to bring drywall or plaster down on you, so poke a small drain hole from the side only if you can stand clear of the sag.
• Stay off the roof entirely; wet shingles, hidden soft decking, and hail-slicked surfaces cause serious falls after a storm, and inspection is a job for someone with a ladder and fall protection.
• Cut power to any room with water near outlets, fixtures, or a breached ceiling before you walk through it, and never touch a wet electrical panel.
• Sniff for gas before running anything that can spark — if you smell rotten egg near a damaged wall or meter, leave the house and call your gas utility from outside.
• Photograph hazards from a safe distance instead of moving them; a limb on the roof or a dangling gutter is both evidence and a liability you should not handle alone.
• Wear boots and work gloves near the debris field, which hides roofing nails, broken glass, and torn flashing edges after every storm.

Adjusters pay on what you can prove, not what you describe. Shoot this entire list before you move a single branch or wipe a single stain.

• Shoot a wide establishing photo of each of the four elevations of the house so every later close-up has a known location — front, back, and both sides.
• Photograph the roof from the ground on all four sides, using your phone's zoom for missing shingles, lifted flashing, and dented ridge caps rather than climbing.
• Capture the point of impact directly — the tree strike, the hail field, the spot where a branch punched through — with one wide shot and one tight shot.
• Photograph every interior stain, drip, and wet spot with a dated object in the frame, such as that day's newspaper, a phone showing the date, or a ruler for scale.
• Shoot the debris field before you clean it: shingles in the yard, granules washed into the driveway, torn gutter sections, and any roofing material that landed away from the house.
• Photograph the gutters and downspouts, because dents, detachment, or a load of loose granules tells the adjuster the roof took a hit even where the shingles still look intact.
• Shoot the siding, windows, and screens on the same elevation as the roof damage — matching wind or hail marks on the wall corroborate the roof claim.
• Record a slow video walking the exterior and interior, narrating what each shot shows and speaking the date out loud so the date lives inside the file, not just in the metadata.
• Back everything up to the cloud or email it to yourself the same day, before any cleanup, so the original files and their timestamps survive a lost or dropped phone.

Your policy requires you to prevent further damage once you know about it — but only what is reasonable and safe. Overreach earns nothing; documentation does.

• Move furniture, electronics, and anything valuable out from under an active leak, and lift what you can off a wet floor.
• Put buckets and towels under drips and lay plastic over what you can't move, then photograph the mitigation itself as proof you acted promptly.
• Get a professional emergency tarp on a breached roof rather than climbing up yourself; a properly battened tarp stops the leak and its cost is a recoverable part of the claim, so hold the receipt.
• Throw nothing away yet — bagged wet insulation, a shattered skylight dome, and the branch that hit the roof are all evidence until the adjuster has seen them or you have clear photos.
• Keep every receipt and invoice in one envelope: tarps, plywood, a fan or dehumidifier rental, a hotel night if the home is unlivable — reasonable mitigation costs are typically reimbursable, so track them.
• Do not start permanent repairs before the adjuster inspects, because fixing the roof for good erases the damage you are trying to claim.
• Write down when the damage happened and when you found each new leak; a simple dated timeline strengthens the claim and jogs your memory weeks later.

Report the loss through the channel your policy names, and log every contact. What you say in the first call gets quoted back to you later.

• Open the claim through your carrier's app, website, or claims line rather than a casual text to your agent, and write down the claim number the moment you get it.
• Report promptly — most NJ homeowner policies require notice 'as soon as reasonably possible' and set a filing window, so check your policy for the exact deadline instead of assuming you have unlimited time.
• Describe what happened factually — wind storm on a given date, shingles off the north slope, ceiling leak in the back bedroom — and avoid guessing at causes or numbers you can't yet support.
• Log every call with the date, time, the name of who you spoke with, and what they committed to; the carrier keeps notes, and so should you.
• Ask the carrier to put the adjuster's inspection date in writing and confirm whether they want their own inspection before you schedule any repair.
• Never hand over your only copy of photos or receipts, and never sign a release or proof-of-loss form you have not read end to end.
• Ask whether your policy pays replacement cost or actual cash value and confirm your deductible, because those two terms decide what actually reaches you — check your policy for both.

The carrier's adjuster works for the carrier. A second set of eyes on the roof, before you accept or reject anything, is how you learn what the damage actually is.

• Book an independent inspection — a documented Roof Health Assessment — before you accept the carrier's scope or sign off on the claim, because the adjuster's number reflects one short visit.
• Choose an inspector who documents with photos and drone imagery and hands you a written scope of repair you keep regardless of whether you hire them.
• Have the contractor meet your adjuster on the roof to walk the damage together, since a roofer can point out lifted flashing or bruised shingles an adjuster on a tight schedule misses.
• Know what a roofer legally can and can't do in New Jersey: a contractor inspects, documents, and writes a repair scope, but adjusting or negotiating your claim for a fee requires a public adjuster license — so anyone promising to 'handle your claim' or 'fight your insurer' is overstepping. Zubar's role in insurance restoration is to inspect, document, and write the scope, not adjust the claim.
• Get the inspection findings in writing with dated photos so you can compare the independent scope against the carrier's line by line.
• Ask directly whether the damage is storm-caused or wear-and-tear, because only sudden storm damage is covered, and an honest inspector will tell you which side of that line your roof is on.
• Don't let a filing deadline stampede you into skipping the second opinion; if you need more time, ask the carrier in writing rather than rushing the decision.

Storm-chasers move fast because the paperwork is the product. Read every line, and take nothing home the same day it is handed to you.

• Never sign an Assignment of Benefits (AOB), which hands your insurance claim and its payout to the contractor and takes you out of control of your own claim.
• Refuse any contract with a blank or vague scope of work; the scope, materials, and warranty terms must be filled in before you sign, not left as 'to be determined after the adjuster.'
• Walk away from anyone who offers to 'handle,' 'waive,' 'eat,' or 'cover' your deductible — that is insurance fraud in New Jersey, and signing it makes you a party to it.
• Don't sign a contract 'contingent on insurance approval' without reading what you owe if the claim is denied or comes in low, because some of these bind you to that contractor either way.
• Never authorize work to begin under a deadline the salesman invented on your porch; a real repair schedule survives you sleeping on it.
• Confirm the contractor is a licensed NJ Home Improvement Contractor carrying general liability and workers' comp before you sign anything — ask for the HIC number and the certificate of insurance.
• Keep a copy of everything you sign; a contractor who won't leave you a signed copy is telling you something.

The crew that shows up uninvited after a storm may be from three states away and gone by winter. These questions sort the local from the transient in about two minutes.

• Ask for their New Jersey HIC license number and verify it, because out-of-state storm crews often aren't licensed to work here.
• Ask where their office is and how long they've worked in Bergen, Passaic, Essex, Hudson, or Morris county — a real local address means someone to call when a warranty repair comes up.
• Ask whether the crews are direct employees or 1099 subcontractors, so you know who is actually on your roof and whose workers' comp covers them.
• Ask for current proof of general liability and workers' compensation insurance, since an uninsured worker hurt on your property can become your financial problem.
• Ask what workmanship warranty they put in writing and whether it's transferable — a verbal 'lifetime' warranty from a truck with an out-of-state plate is worth nothing.
• Ask whether they'll give you a free written, itemized estimate and let you keep the inspection photos even if you don't hire them, because a contractor confident in the work won't hold your documentation hostage.
• Ask them to leave the estimate and go; anyone who won't let you get a second opinion before you sign is selling pressure, not roofing.