Roof emergency · Baldwin & Mobile County, AL
Emergency roof repair
Water coming in, a roof opened up by the storm, or something through the decking — call us. We will tell you honestly when we can be there, and what to do in the meantime.
Call now
(251) 342-4338A roof emergency is a phone call, not a form. Tell us what you are seeing and roughly when it started and we will tell you where you stand — including if we think it can wait until morning.
Licensed Alabama roofing contractor #7430. On Gulf Coast roofs since 1987. We are not a public adjuster and we do not take assignments of benefits.
Before anything else
What to do right now
Six things, in this order. The first one is the only one with no exceptions.
- 01
Stay off the roof
This is the one rule with no exception. A wet roof is slick, a storm-damaged roof has soft spots you cannot see, and a roof with a tree on it may be holding weight it was never designed to hold. Every year the Gulf Coast sends homeowners to the hospital off their own roofs during a storm, and none of it saved the roof. Nothing up there is worth the fall.
- 02
Kill the power to the wet area
If water is coming through a light fixture, a ceiling fan, or anywhere near an outlet, shut that circuit off at the breaker before you put a hand near it. If the panel itself is wet or you are unsure which circuit it is, leave it and call an electrician — that part is not a roofing job.
- 03
Get out from under a sagging ceiling
A bulging or sagging ceiling is holding trapped water, and drywall lets go all at once. Move people, pets, and anything you care about out of the room first. Some homeowners relieve the pressure deliberately with a small hole and a bucket underneath; that is a judgment call, and it is safer than standing under it waiting.
- 04
Contain the water
Buckets and a mop bucket under the drips, towels around the edges, plastic sheeting or a tarp over furniture you cannot move. Most policies expect you to take reasonable steps to stop the damage getting worse, so this is not just housekeeping — it is part of protecting your own position.
- 05
Photograph everything before you clean it up
Date-stamped photos of the water coming in, the stained ceiling, the wet insulation, the buckets, anything that landed in the yard. Photograph the roof from the ground only. Keep the receipts for tarps, buckets, and fans. This is the documentation an insurance file lives or dies on, and it takes four minutes.
- 06
Do not sign anything yet
Not a contract, not a work authorization, not an assignment of benefits, and not a blank estimate. Nobody who is genuinely helping you needs a signature in the first hour of a storm. Getting a tarp on the roof and signing a restoration contract are two entirely different decisions.
If anyone in the house is in danger, call 911 first
A tree through the roof, a partial collapse, sparking wiring, or gas you can smell is a fire department call before it is a roofing call. We can tarp a hole. We cannot make an unsafe structure safe to be in.
The three real ones
What counts as a roof emergency
Not every roof problem is an emergency, and treating everything as one is how people end up signing bad contracts at nine at night. Three situations genuinely are.
Water is actively coming in
Dripping through a ceiling, running down a wall, pooling in a light fixture, or a ceiling that has started to bulge and sag. Water already inside the house is the clearest emergency there is, because every hour it keeps running is more drywall, more insulation, and more of the framing getting wet.
The storm opened the roof
Shingles or panels stripped off in a band, ridge cap gone, a section of decking exposed to the sky, flashing peeled back off a wall or chimney. The roof may not be leaking yet — it will the next time it rains, and on this coast that is usually measured in days.
Something hit the roof
A limb, a whole tree, a piece of someone else's roof, or debris driven through the decking. Impact damage is the one to treat as structural until a person who does this for a living has looked at it, because what you can see from the yard is rarely the whole of it.
What usually is not an emergency
These are worth a call and an inspection. They are not worth a panic decision tonight.
- A stain on the ceiling that has been the same size for months — real, worth an inspection, not an emergency tonight
- A few shingles lifted at the edge with no water inside and no rain in the forecast
- Granules in the gutters, which is usually a roof aging on schedule rather than a roof failing
- A leak that only shows up at one window and stops when the wind changes — often flashing or siding rather than the roof
Once we are there
What happens on an emergency call
An emergency visit is about stopping the damage and recording it. The permanent repair is a separate, scheduled, quoted piece of work — and anyone who tries to do both in the dark is doing one of them badly.
Assess what is actually wrong
We look at the roof, the attic where we can get to it, and the interior damage, and we work out where the water is entering — which is very often not directly above where it is coming out. You get told what we found in plain language, including when the answer is that it is smaller than it looked.
Get temporary protection on it
Where the roof is open, the fix that matters tonight is a properly fastened tarp or a dry-in over the exposed area, not a permanent repair rushed in the dark. Done right it is anchored so the next squall does not take it off, and it buys the time to do the real repair properly instead of twice.
Document it while it is still fresh
Photographs of the damage, the exposed area, and the temporary protection, plus notes on what we did and when. If you end up opening an insurance claim, this is the record of the roof on the day it happened — and damage recorded in the days after a storm reads very differently from the same damage found next year.
Schedule the permanent repair
Once the house is dry and stable, we measure it, put a written estimate in your hands, and book the real work. Sometimes that is a repair. Sometimes it is a replacement. We will tell you which one we think it is and why, and you can hold that estimate next to anyone else's.
About timing, said plainly
We do not publish a response window. After a storm, every roofer between Bay Minette and Dauphin Island is working through the same list, and a promised hour would be a number we could not keep. Call, tell us what you are seeing, and we will tell you honestly when we can be there and what to do until then. If we think you need somebody sooner than we can get there, we will say that too.
Why the phone rings here
The two counties this happens in
Between 2000 and 2025, the National Weather Service's severe storm database recorded the following in Baldwin and Mobile County. These are reported events at county resolution, which means they undercount — a roof opened up on a rural road at two in the morning does not always make the record.
Damaging wind reports
210 Baldwin
267 Mobile
Severe hail reports
67 Baldwin
70 Mobile
Tornado reports
53 Baldwin
66 Mobile
Source: NOAA Storm Prediction Center severe-weather report database, 2000–2025. Full county record on our Gulf Coast storm data page, and the restoration side of it on storm damage roof repair.
After the storm
Six things to watch for in your driveway
The week after a named storm is the week the door-knockers arrive. Liberty has worked this coast since 1987 and has been BBB accredited since 1988, which is a boring sort of credential right up until the moment you need to find your roofer two years later. Here is what we would tell our own families to watch for.
They knocked on your door
After a named storm the Eastern Shore fills with out-of-state trucks working neighborhoods block by block. Some are legitimate. Many will not be reachable when a warranty question comes up in two years, because the phone number belongs to a crew that has moved on to the next disaster.
They want a deposit in cash today
A large cash deposit handed over on the spot, before any material is ordered and before anything is in writing, is the single most common way homeowners lose money after a Gulf Coast storm. Legitimate contractors take a check, invoice properly, and can wait for you to read the contract.
They put an AOB in front of you
An assignment of benefits signs your claim rights over to the contractor. Once it is signed, the conversation with your insurer stops being yours. Liberty does not take assignments of benefits, and we would tell you to walk away from anyone who asks for one in your driveway.
They offer to cover your deductible
It sounds generous and it is a problem — the cost has to come from somewhere, which usually means the scope, the materials, or the paperwork. We do not waive, absorb, or discount deductibles, and neither should anyone else.
They cannot produce a license number
Alabama licenses roofing contractors, and the number is public. Liberty's is #7430, and it takes about thirty seconds to check any contractor's against the state registry before you sign anything.
The pressure is the pitch
Today only, the crew is in the neighborhood right now, the price goes up tomorrow. A roof that needs replacing this week will still need replacing next week. Urgency belongs to the water, not to the sales conversation.
If the damage is going to become an insurance claim
Open it yourself, with your own insurer — that call has to come from the policyholder. Our part is the contractor's part: we photograph what we found, we measure it, we give you a written estimate, and we meet your adjuster on the roof so the same damage gets looked at by both sides at once. We do not file, manage, negotiate, or promise an outcome on a claim, and we do not take assignments of benefits.
Common questions
Emergency roof repair questions
- What counts as an emergency roof repair?
- Water actively entering the house, a roof left open by a storm, or something that hit the roof — a limb, a tree, or debris driven through the decking. Those three get treated as emergencies because the damage compounds while you wait. A ceiling stain that has looked the same for six months is real and worth an inspection, but it is not the same call.
- Can you come out tonight?
- Call and we will tell you honestly when we can be there. We do not publish a response-time promise, because after a Gulf Coast storm every roofer in two counties is fielding the same calls at once and a guaranteed window would be a number we could not keep. What you will get on the phone is a straight answer about where you sit and what to do in the meantime.
- Should I put a tarp up myself?
- Not on the roof. A wet or storm-damaged roof is genuinely dangerous, and a tarp that is not fastened properly will come off in the next squall and can take more of the roof with it. What you can safely do from inside is contain the water, move what you can, and photograph everything. Leave the roof to someone with the harness and the ladder.
- Do you tarp roofs, and does that fix the leak?
- We do get temporary protection on an open roof, and no, it is not a fix. A tarp or a dry-in is a way to stop the house taking more water until the real repair can be scoped, quoted, and done properly. Treat it as the pause button rather than the answer, and expect a written estimate for the permanent work to follow it.
- Will my insurance pay for the emergency work?
- That is your insurer's decision, not ours, and it depends on your policy, your deductible, and the cause of the damage. What we can tell you is that most policies expect you to take reasonable steps to prevent further damage, and that keeping receipts and photographs of the emergency work is what gives you something to hand them. We document what we do; we do not file, manage, or promise outcomes on claims.
- Someone knocked on my door after the storm. Should I let them on the roof?
- Not before you have checked who they are. Ask for a license number and verify it against the Alabama registry, do not hand over a cash deposit, and do not sign an assignment of benefits or a blank work authorization on your porch. A contractor who is still going to be here in five years will have no problem waiting for you to read the paperwork.
Free inspection · no obligation
If water is coming in, call. Don't fill this out.
(251) 342-4338The form is for the calls that can wait — a stain that has been there a while, a few shingles off with no water inside, or a roof you want looked at before the next storm. Tell us what you are seeing and we will come look at it, free, and tell you straight what we find.
- Free inspection, written estimate, no obligation
- Licensed Alabama roofing contractor #7430
- Baldwin and Mobile County only — we live here
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