Direct answer. In the first 72 hours of a storm event, the GM or owner owns five things nobody else can carry for you: who gets called in, which losses you take, how much cash and credit you put at risk on materials, the communication cadence customers and carriers will actually get, and the rotation rules that keep the team standing into the later weeks. Everything else is execution. Those five are the job.
Estimators open files. Techs pull water. Dispatch fills the board. You decide what the company becomes for the next several weeks.
Hour 0 — Stand the board or hold
Decision point: Stand or hold.
Do not treat every warning polygon as a surge. Stand the board when you have verified damage, active water in structures, or a live warning already producing calls in your footprint. Hold regional moves, overtime outside the verified pocket, and speculative material buys when the event is still a forecast.
Name one board owner. If it is you, say so. If it is your ops lead, give them the board and keep the decisions below. Two people as the desk means double dispatch and missed callbacks.
Three columns before the phones light up: live tickets, watch-and-hold, and no. Update when warnings change — not when the office gets anxious.
Hours 0–6 — Staff the surge
Decision point: Who gets called in.
Call in this order: on-call leads who can open a file and run a crew; cross-trained techs who can extract and set drying equipment; office or after-hours coverage who log every call into one shared sheet; then estimators who can authorize and document without inventing scope under pressure.
Do not strip occupied jobs to chase the first wet ZIP. Pull only when the new loss is authorized, already wet, and inside your safe staffing envelope. Orphaning open jobs creates two problems: a surge you cannot finish and a book you damaged.
Decision point: Mutual aid — yes, no, or later.
Mutual aid is a named agreement with a peer shop: what they send, who supervises, who owns the customer and the claim file, how materials get billed, and when they go home. Call it when your bench cannot cover tomorrow’s verified load without skipping safety or documentation. Do not call it for a volume brag. A borrowed crew with no file owner is unpaid work waiting to happen.
If terms were never written before the event, keep the ask narrow: one crew type, one supervisor rule, one invoice path.
Hours 6–24 — Triage which losses you take
Decision point: Intake rules.
Triage is not “first caller wins.” It is a short script and a hard filter. On every inbound: loss type, water still active or stopped, power on or off, approximate affected area, building type, who can authorize work, and whether a carrier or TPA is already on the file.
Take losses you can staff safely with a lead who can document. Prioritize active intrusion, authorized commercial doors you already serve, and residential losses where dry-in and extraction can start without a mystery decision-maker. Decline work that needs a crew class you lack, a hazard you cannot clear, or an authorization path that leaves you unpaid after materials go out.
Say no early. A clean decline at hour twelve beats a half-staffed job sitting wet while your best lead explains an empty moisture log.
One shared call log. If it is not in the log, it did not happen.
Hours 6–24 — Cash and credit on materials
Decision point: Exposure ceiling.
Storm work spends cash before it collects. Set a ceiling on materials, rentals, and vendor commits against authorized, documented work — not hope.
Stage for the board you have: extraction, air movers, dehumidifiers, containment, tarp and dry-in for openings you can reach. Hold speculative yard buys for damage types that have not verified. Rent for the peak; do not finance a warehouse because Tuesday felt busy.
Require a named file, a signed authorization path, and a materials log before a truck becomes a rolling open account. Match big vendor restocks to open tickets and the next day of verified demand. Credit bridges timing; it should not underwrite bad intake.
Tighten the file standard now: photos, moisture map, equipment counts, dry-in proof. Clean files move. Messy files sit on your cash.
Hours 24–48 — Communication cadence
Decision point: Who hears from you, and how often.
Customers and carriers need a predictable pulse, not a novel.
For the insured or property contact: arrival window, what was done today, what is wet, dry-in status, next on-site time. Keep one voice or role when you can — bouncing the customer across three people burns trust fast.
For adjusters: short, complete updates — cause narrative, dry-in proof, category and class with rationale, moisture map, equipment by day, photo set. Offer a phone window only after missing docs are in the thread. Storm desks are drowning; the easy-to-approve file gets attention.
For commercial doors: one point of contact each side, written change orders for scope moves. Verbal “go ahead” on a wet building is how week-four disputes start.
Lock the cadence in the first two days: daily for active drying chambers, same-day return on adjuster questions, one after-hours path that still hits the shared log.
Hours 48–72 — Protect the team across the weeks
Decision point: Rotation and stop rules.
Hour 72 is not the end of the event. The mistake is deciding everyone sprints until the phones quiet down. They will not quiet down on your schedule.
Name stretch rules before people negotiate them from exhaustion: who sleeps, who is second shift, who is off-call even if the board is ugly, who can pull a crew for safety. Cross-train so one hero lead is not the only person who can read a meter and talk to an adjuster.
Watch skipped moisture readings, missing authorizations, short tempers, undocumented equipment. Those are burnout signals. Rotate before file quality collapses. Feed people. Stagger starts. Do not turn occupied non-storm work into the punishment detail.
Decisions that cannot be delegated
These stay with the GM or owner even with a strong ops lead on the board:
- Stand or hold on regional mobilization and overtime posture.
- Intake ceiling — which loss classes you accept while the surge is live.
- Mutual aid and subcontract posture — who wears your name in the field.
- Cash and credit ceiling on materials, rentals, and vendor commits.
- Stop and rotation rules that protect documentation and people.
- Exceptions — the ugly job you take for a key account, and the attractive job you refuse because it breaks the company.
You can delegate the phone, the truck, the meters, and the supplement draft. You cannot delegate the shape of the company during the event.
What hour 72 should look like
By the end of day three you should answer without hunting: live, deferred, and declined tickets — and why; who works tonight and who is off; materials committed against which files; which customers and carriers got today’s update; which of the six non-delegables you already decided.
If you cannot answer those, you have a busy office, not a storm operation. Fix the desk before you add ZIP codes.
Storm season rewards the shop that decides early, documents clean, and still has a team standing when the next band of calls arrives. That is the GM’s first 72 hours.
Questions
What should the GM personally do on hour one? Stand or hold the board, name the board owner, set who gets called in, and state the intake and spend ceilings. Do not drive to the wettest address unless you are the only lead left.
When do you call mutual aid? When tomorrow’s verified load exceeds the crews you can supervise and document under your own name — not when the phone feels loud.
What is the fastest way to break a storm week? Taking every loss, buying materials against unverified demand, and running the same leads until the moisture logs lie.