During the hurricane you hear loud noises of shingles being torn from your roof, followed by hours and hours of rain. Nothing is protecting your home from the elements.
It begins w a drip, drip drip. Your run and get buckets and towels to try to collect the water. This is more difficult because the electric has gone off and you are attempting this in the middle of the night with a flashlight.
The best thing you can do is to poke a hole in the drywall where the water is coming out. This will create and opening for the water to exit and you can collect it in a bucket. If you do not open up a hole the water will collect in the insulation and drywall. The wet ceiling will get so heavy the entire part could collapse on the floor.
Poke a hole to release the water or end up with a collapsed ceiling.
As soon as it is safe to go back outside make sure you get your roof tarped and make temporary repairs.
After the roof has been tarped, you will want to make sure there is no more water getting in. The best way to do this is to trace the edges of the water stains with a pencil. That way if the roof leak is still occurring you will see the edge of the water go past the pencil lines.
It is not always easy to determine a source of the leak. It may not be as easy as covering missing shingles. Lots of time water will enter around a roof pipe, head wall or skylight and run down rafters and end up in a totally different are of the house.
Putting a tarp on your roof, doing all the temporary repairs , will stop the leaks until permanent repairs can be made. Roof leaks are not fun, but following these few tricks can stop a leak from turning into a huge mess.