When a hurricane crosses the central Gulf Coast, it doesn’t just move shingles and fences. It moves animals. Rats and mice lose burrows and attics and go looking for the nearest dry structure — often within days. Roach populations bloom in debris piles and spoiled-food garbage. Flooded ground lifts entire fire ant colonies out of the soil and floats them, alive, into whatever yard the water carries them to. And the soaked, damaged wood a storm leaves behind is exactly what subterranean termites and carpenter ants are built to exploit.

Mobile has been through this cycle enough times — Frederic, Ivan, Katrina’s outer bands, Sally — that the pattern is predictable. Which is good news, because predictable means preppable. An hour of pest-minded prep before a storm saves weeks of cleanup calls after one.

Here’s the checklist the operators on this line wish every Mobile and Baldwin County homeowner ran before evacuating or hunkering down:

• Lock down the garbage. Bag everything, cinch the lids, and if you’re evacuating, empty the cans entirely. A tipped, overflowing can after a storm is a feeding station for displaced rats and a nursery for roaches — and collection trucks may not run for a week or more.
• Close the attic doors you can’t see. Walk the roofline and soffits and seal gaps at vents, fascia returns, and the spot where cable enters the house. Displaced rodents move fast after storms, and a dime-size gap under a soffit is an open door to a dry attic.
• Photograph your termite bond and service paperwork. Take phone photos of your termite bond, renewal receipts, and any pest service agreements, and back them up off-site. If the storm damages the house — or the file cabinet — those documents anchor both insurance conversations and your standing with the bond company.
• Trim limbs off the roofline. Any branch touching or overhanging the roof is two problems at once: a wind hazard and a rat highway. Roof rats in Mobile’s oak canopy travel limbs the way we travel sidewalks. Cut the bridge before the wind does it for you — messily.
• Clear the yard of loose debris now. Lumber scraps, brush piles, stacked pots, tarps — anything that will end up soaked and grounded becomes post-storm harborage for roaches, earwigs, centipedes, and rodents. What you haul off in the calm doesn’t shelter pests in the aftermath.
• Raise and pull back firewood. Wood stacked against the house, on soil, is termite bait even in dry weather. After a flood it’s worse. Get it up on racks and away from the slab before the season peaks.

Fire ant rafts are real, and they’re dangerous. When floodwater covers a fire ant colony, the ants don’t drown — they link legs and bodies into a living raft, load the queen and brood on top, and float. Rafts drift on flood current for days and can hold tens of thousands of ants. They look like mats of reddish-brown debris on the water, and here’s the safety part: a raft that touches a boot, a paddle, or a leg swarms onto it in seconds, and every ant stings. If you’re wading or boating through flooded streets in Theodore or along Dog River after a storm, give any floating brown mat a wide berth. When the water drops, those rafts ground themselves in yards — which is why fire ant calls spike in the weeks after every flood event on this coast.

Floodwater can disturb the termite barrier protecting your house. Most termite-treated homes in Mobile rely on a continuous band of treated soil around the foundation. That barrier is chemistry sitting in dirt — and a flood that erodes, saturates, or redeposits soil can thin it or break its continuity. Storm repairs make it worse: trenching for a new sewer line, regrading a washed-out bed, or replacing a slab section can slice a clean gap through treated soil. None of this means your protection is automatically gone. It means the barrier’s condition is now unknown — and only an inspection can settle it. The licensed operator evaluates whether the soil disturbance calls for a retreat, and if you carry a termite bond, that evaluation is exactly the conversation to have with the bond holder documented in writing.

This is also why the paperwork photos from the checklist matter. “The house was under bond, here’s the agreement, here’s the flood line” is a strong, documentable position. “I think we had a termite thing from the old owners” is not.

• “Would flooding on my lot disturb my termite protection?” A good operator looks at your grade, your drainage, and where the treated zone runs — and tells you what a flood would and wouldn’t threaten. If you don’t know whether your home relies on treated soil or bait stations, this is how you find out.
• “Where are my exclusion weak points?” Ask them to walk the roofline and crawlspace and flag the gaps a displaced rat would use. Fixing three soffit returns in July is cheap insurance against an October attic.
• “What should I do about the yard before a storm?” Operators who’ve worked post-storm seasons here have strong opinions about woodpiles, mulch depth, and debris — borrow their experience for your own lot.
• “If a storm disturbs the soil, what are the re-treat terms?” If you hold a termite bond or service agreement, get clear — in writing — on what storm damage does to it and who evaluates the barrier afterward.
• “What’s your ADAI license number?” Every legitimate Alabama operator has one, and the Alabama Department of Agriculture & Industries’ Pesticide Management Section in Montgomery — (334) 240-7240 — can confirm it. Pros expect the question.