Roof Damage After a Storm: What to Do, and Who Is Even Licensed to Do It

A roof is the one part of storm damage where the homeowner is least able to inspect the problem and most likely to be sold the solution at the front door. This guide covers the looking, the temporary fix, and the part almost nobody checks: whether the word "licensed" on a roofing company's van means anything at all in your state. It means five different things across the five states below.

Look at the roof without getting on the roof

Wet decking, hidden fasteners and storm debris make a damaged roof a bad place to learn ladder safety. Everything useful can be seen from the ground and from inside:

• From the ground, with binoculars if you have them: missing or lifted shingles or tiles, bare underlayment, a dented or displaced ridge, damaged flashing around chimneys and vents, gutters pulled loose, and granules washed into the downspout outlets.
• From inside the attic, in daylight with the lights off: pinholes of light, wet sheathing, damp insulation, and staining that runs downhill from a point of entry that is usually uphill of the stain.
• From inside the rooms: ceiling stains, bulging drywall, and doors that suddenly stick.
• Around the house: shingles or tiles on the lawn, and impact marks on soft metal.

Photograph all of it before anyone touches anything, for the reason set out in the first-steps guide.

Temporary protection is your job. The repair is not

Covering an opening so the next rain does not finish what the storm started is normally expected of you, and a policy can hold it against you if you do nothing. The Texas Department of Insurance states the general rule in one line among its water-damage guidance: your insurer may deny the claim if you do not protect the property. Your policy decides your claim, so read your declarations page, but the direction of travel is the same everywhere.

Protection is not repair. A tarp, boarding, and moving belongings out of the drip line are protection. Replacing decking, resetting tile, or a full tear-off is the repair, and doing it before the loss is documented turns a claim into an argument. If a company offers to "just start" the permanent work while the adjuster is still days away, that is a commercial decision being made for you.

"Licensed roofer" means five different things in five states

This is the part of storm repair where checking actually separates companies, because the register behind the claim is not the same register, and in one of these states it does not exist.

• Florida licenses roofing as its own trade. A Florida roofer holds a DBPR roofing license, checkable in the DBPR licensee search. Details and traps: verifying a Florida license.
• Texas licenses nobody to roof. The Roofing Contractors Association of Texas says it outright: anyone can call themselves a roofer in Texas. The credential that exists is the voluntary RCAT Licensed Roofing Contractor program, an industry credential rather than a state one, searchable in the RCAT directory. Our Texas roofing pages are built on that program precisely because the state offers nothing to check.
• Virginia licenses roofing as a specialty, and lets others do it anyway. The roofing specialty appears on a DPOR record as its own code, but Virginia also allows its general building and home-improvement classifications to perform roofing work - so a general contractor can legally roof your house without holding the roofing specialty. Check a record at the DPOR license lookup; the Virginia guide explains the class letters, which are a project-size tier and not a trade.
• Arizona licenses roofing through the Registrar of Contractors, where the class also carries a commercial, residential or dual scope - and a commercial-only license does not permit residential work. Search the ROC contractor search, and read the Arizona guide for why scope outranks the word Active.
• California licenses roofing as classification C-39, checkable at the CSLB license check, which also discloses complaints. The California guide covers what CLEAR means and how to read the bond and workers' compensation fields.

The practical consequence: in Florida, Virginia, Arizona and California, a company that cannot give you a number that resolves in the state system has told you something. In Texas it has not, because there is nothing to resolve - which is why the questions about insurance and about the written scope of work carry the whole weight there. How to check a contractor's insurance is the companion check.

The door-to-door offer

Oregon's Construction Contractors Board, in its consumer guide to hiring a contractor, gives the advice in its plainest form: do not be pressured by contractors who solicit door-to-door, and never jump into an agreement with somebody you just met, even for a small remodel or repair project. The CCB also lists what an unlicensed contractor leaves you without: no bond to reimburse poor workmanship, no access to the board's mediation, unlikely to hold liability insurance, and unable to pull required building permits.

None of that means a company at your door is dishonest. It means the check you would have run in a calm week is the check to run now. Hiring a contractor after a storm covers what several states do to unlicensed work once an emergency has been declared.

Roofing pages here list only companies matched to the credential named above for that state: Tampa, Dallas, Richmond, Phoenix. The rules, state by state, are on the methodology page.