Hurricane season starts June 1 and runs through November 30. If you manage condos, co-ops, HOAs, or multifamily properties, that’s six months where one bad storm can trigger evacuations, property damage, insurance claims, and a flood of resident questions you weren’t ready for.
This playbook is what we’d hand a new property manager on day one. It’s a hurricane preparedness checklist for property managers, paired with the communication plan that must run alongside it. It covers what to do before the season starts, how to communicate when a storm enters the cone, what to document, and how to recover. It also extends to other extreme weather events like tornadoes, winter storms, wildfires, and flooding, because the framework holds even when the trigger isn’t a hurricane.
Boards approve budgets and insurance carriers cover claims, but the actual execution falls on the property management team. You’re the one residents call when the power goes out at 2am. You’re the one explaining to a 78-year-old owner on the 14th floor why she needs to evacuate. You’re the one coordinating with the fire department, the insurance adjuster, and the contractor who shows up after the storm.
Skip the prep and you’re improvising during the worst possible moment. A real playbook, written down and tested, is the difference between a chaotic week and a controlled one.
Every section of this checklist has a communication beat baked in. Read it as the operational half of the playbook.
A communication plan is not the same as a list of channels. It’s a decision tree: what gets sent, when, by whom, to which residents, and through what channel. If you can't answer those five questions, you don't have a hurricane plan, you just have a building management tool sitting unused when it matters most.
Your hurricane communication plan should cover three windows.
Pre-storm (72 to 24 hours out): Email and announcements. Residents have time to read longer messages, plan their own response, and ask questions. Use customizable templates for consistency and to save your team time when stress is high. Post the same content as an announcement in the resident portal and on building screens so residents who don’t check email still see it. BuildingLink’s email blast and announcement tools handle this in one workflow.
Imminent (24 hours to landfall): SMS and voice broadcasts. Short messages, urgent tone, action-oriented. Target by occupant type, building, or floor when relevant. A flood-zone resident on a ground floor needs different instructions than someone on the 22nd. BuildingLink’s emergency broadcasts let you segment your message by exactly that.
During and after: Mobile app and SMS. Residents are likely without TV, possibly without WiFi, and almost certainly checking their phone. A mobile-first communication path is the only reliable channel during the storm itself.
“During a hurricane, instant communication is the whole game. With BuildingLink’s GEO Staff App, property managers have mobile connectivity at their fingertips. Not just to send messages, but to keep everyone informed and connected. Reliable access to critical updates, no matter where you are.” - Rick Worth, Account Executive
Test the playbook annually. Run a tabletop drill at the start of every hurricane season with your staff and one or two board members. The first time you discover your SMS broadcast doesn’t reach 40% of your residents shouldn’t be during an actual storm.
Paper handouts don’t survive a flood. Filing cabinets don’t help residents who have already evacuated. The fix is a centralized document library accessible from the resident portal and mobile app.
What to upload before hurricane season:
Co-ops with formal emergency response plans should keep that document linked from this list too. We have a free template if you don’t have one yet, covered in Your Guide to Emergency Planning for Cooperative Housing.
Hurricane season runs six months. Severe weather doesn’t take the other six off. The same playbook structure adapts to most extreme weather events. The trigger and the timeline change. The framework doesn’t.
Tornadoes. Compress the timeline. Watches and warnings can come within minutes, not days. The “during the storm” section becomes the entire plan. Pre-position residents with shelter location info before tornado season starts.
Winter storms and ice. Pre-season prep moves from May to October. Add salt and de-icer inventory, heating system inspections, and pipe-freeze prevention. The communication plan emphasizes “stay home, stay warm” guidance during the event itself.
Wildfires. Air quality monitoring becomes a year-round task in fire-prone regions. Add HEPA filter inventory and HVAC recirculation protocols. Evacuation timelines can range from days to under an hour depending on fire behavior.
Flooding (non-hurricane). Flash flood watches require a response in minutes, not hours. Sump pump inspections move from annual to quarterly in flood-prone buildings. Sandbag inventory and flood barrier deployment plans matter year-round.
Derechos and severe thunderstorms. Treat like a compressed hurricane. Watch-to-impact can be 6 to 12 hours. Same communication windows, faster cadence.
The point: build the playbook once for hurricanes, then layer the regional weather specifics on top.
After any major weather event, the focus shifts to recovery. Maintenance request tools let residents report damage directly through the portal, which gives you one centralized queue instead of a flood of phone calls and emails. Prioritize by urgency, assign to staff or vendors, and communicate status back to residents without anyone re-asking the same question three times.
Quick triage rules of thumb:
Residents accept slower timelines if you communicate them clearly upfront. They don’t accept silence.
Trusted by HOAs, co-ops, condominiums, and multifamily properties around the globe, BuildingLink helps property managers run their communities better, smarter, and faster. From hurricane communication plans to year-round resident communication, our platform gives you one centralized system for record-keeping, communications, maintenance, and front desk operations.
Book your BuildingLink demo today and see how property managers handle storm season without the chaos.