"It's not luck," Leslie Chapman-Henderson, the president and CEO of the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, told Business Insider. FLASH is a nonprofit that advocates for disaster-resilient homes and publishes a guide to hurricane preparedness. "I think if you look at a house that survived, nine times out of 10 it's going to be because the roof is well connected and the garage door stayed in place. Those are the two biggest clues in a wind event."
"Now you've got not only the wind whistling over the roof trying to suck the roof off, but you've got this internal pressure trying to push the roof off," Michael O'Reilly, a licensed engineer and construction instructor at Colorado State University, told BI. Perhaps the biggest opening in a house is its garage door.
"If you're doing only one thing, do the garage door because that is your largest and weakest opening," Chapman-Henderson said. That's why Chapman-Henderson says it's the most important part of the house to board up ahead of a storm, and the first thing to consider upgrading.
FLASH recommends three different options at different budget points. The cheapest is to grab a drill and board up the garage door with wood 2-by-4s ahead of any incoming storm. The next option is to spend about $200 to $750 to have a professional install a garage-door storm kit with struts and braces that permanently reinforce the door.
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