It’s been a busy weather start to 2019 for restorers across the U.S. In the Northwest, there was the deep freeze; the Midwest has been experiencing record-breaking and deadly flooding and before that some major snow and ice storms; some of the Central States – and Georgia – have seen deadly tornadoes. And that was all just through the month of March.

This special issue of R&R features a Prepping for Disaster section that covers a variety of topics related to disaster restoration.

The special section starts on page 18 with an article about a new software that is greatly helping restoration contractors, first responders, and government agencies respond to large disasters. And in this case, the software also helped expedite the insurance claims process for people who lost their homes in the deadly California wildfires in 2018.

On page 22, Mitch Byrom continues the CAT loss discussion by trying to alleviate some fears on heat drying, and offer some suggestions on how heat drying could actually help the process along during a CAT. And Annissa rolls out a new Contents Corner on three reasons to respond to disasters on page 25.

The, Phil Rosebrook has part two of his short series on trends within the restoration industry. In the March issue, he walked through and graded his predictions from 2018 (and had a pretty impressive grade!). This month, he’s laying out his predictions for 2019.

The interesting thing, and the point you’ve likely seen me trying to drive home in other recent editor’s notes, is that most of the weather events in 2019 so far did not result in traveling catastrophe loss teams mobilizing to the areas. For the most part, restoration efforts after these weather events have been by restoration companies located in the affected communities. That is why is it critically important that contractors are preparing to scale up their businesses to respond to disasters, even if they are close to home.

This is exactly why the R&R team created Preparing to Respond. There is still time to save your spot – and snag the early bird discount! See you in San Antonio in July!

Cheers!