Preparing Your Home For Storms

Everyone remembers to keep themselves and their families safe during our intense North Georgia summer storms, but how many people think about how to keep their homes safe?  There are a few things you can do to minimize any damage to your house or property during storm season:

• Keep trees and shrubbery properly pruned:  Removing dead or damaged limbs decrease the likelihood of them falling during a storm and either breaking others on its way down, or falling on your house.  If you have large or older trees on your property, consider hiring a professional tree service to accomplish this for you.  Additionally, they can thin out branches to allow for proper wind passage.
• Install lightning rods:  If your house were to get struck by lightning, these lightning rods carry the electrical
  charge of lightning bolts safely to the ground.  This greatly reduces the chance
  of a lightning-induced fire, which just happened locally to a house near Lake Lanier during the storms in late March.
• Make sure all of your important electronic equipment is plugged into a surge protector:  Keep in mind TVs, gaming systems, DVD players, and especially computers!
• Clear any debris or loose items from your yard:  If you have stacks of firewood, make sure that is is either a safe distance from your house, or in a secure location out of the wind’s path.
• In the event of a storm, have a list of items that need to be brought inside or secured: Outdoor tables, chairs, and especially umbrellas can get picked up all too easily and thrown through a window.

To keep your family safe, make sure to always keep an emergency kit with at least  some flashlights, batteries, and a radio.

Stay safe Gainesville, GA!