When Jackie Little and Xavier Muniz returned to their New Port Richey, Florida, home after Hurricane Helene, they hit an unexpected roadblock: Their smart lock was waterlogged and wouldn’t open. While it came with a key backup, they didn’t think to bring the key in the rush to evacuate just days earlier.
“We were in shock, wondering if we were going to have to break a window or something,” Muniz says. “You don’t realize how much you rely on technology until it doesn’t work, then your brain doesn’t know what to do.”
After the storm passed, the couple returned with a contractor to asses the damage to their home before discovering they couldn’t enter. “All we could do was laugh,” Little says. The couple took the situation in stride and filmed a viral video for TikTok showing their reactions.
After searching, they found an unlocked window and shimmied into the house. Once inside, they discovered their newly remodeled home had suffered extensive damage—the waterline from the flood reached 52 inches high. “The devastation [from Hurricane Helene] has been really brutal,” Little says. “I feel really lucky that that’s all that happened.” They decided to strip the house down to the studs and will begin repair work soon.
TikTok content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
This wasn’t an isolated incident, and others have reported similar problems with smart locks following hurricanes and other natural disasters. Jessica Seashore, a homeowner in Wilmington, North Carolina, had her smart lock stop working after Hurricane Isaiah. The issues are caused when water penetrates a smart lock and corrodes the metal or causes the device to short-circuit. “I contacted the company, and they [said there wasn’t anything they could do.] So we let it dry…and then it started working again,” Seashore told AD.
Now every time there’s a tropical storm or hurricane, she covers her lock with plastic wrap and secures it with clear tape. Seashore even posted a video on TikTok showing her method. “It does work,” she says. “We haven’t had any issues since.”
As homes across the East Coast and southern United States are at risk for future hurricane flooding, it’s important to consider smart locks and other home technology during emergency planning. While nearly all smart locks are battery-powered, a few are hard-wired in—meaning they won’t work during a power outage—and others need Wi-Fi to work.
