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Repair storm or water damage
Making it safe can usually start immediately — permits for emergency work are commonly filed after the fact. What follows is a permit question, and if the damage is bad enough it can trigger a rule that governs the whole building rather than the damaged part.
Permit rules are set locally, so the ZIP decides which state code applies and which office you would be dealing with. We use it to look up the jurisdiction and nothing else.
Why nobody can just tell you
Permitting in the United States is run by thousands of separate authorities, and each one can amend the code it adopts. Any site giving you a confident yes or no for every address in the country is guessing, and you cannot tell which answers are the guesses.
So this does not pretend. Each answer is the typical rule, where it comes from, and the thresholds that would flip it — plus a route to the office that actually decides. How this works.